Johannesburg - At least 90 “tsotsi” police officers in Gauteng have been charged for corruption and misconduct in the last three month in what police management believes is a crackdown on criminal elements within the service.
This is revealed in the SAPS’s statistics on errant police officers for the last financial year, released exclusively to The Star.
In those 90 days, 29 cops were dismissed and 45 others suspended without pay following disciplinary hearings.
The transgressions included internal corruption, soliciting or accepting bribes, and aiding and abetting criminals – all of which are burdening the image of the SAPS, according to its top managers.
National police commissioner General Riah Phiyega, when approached for comment on Wednesday, vowed to weed out crooked elements within the police service.
“Police officials who bring shame to the badge by getting involved in crime and human rights abuses have no place in our organisation,” she said.
There are 176 cases under investigation by the Anti-Corruption Task Team for various crimes involving members of the SAPS in Gauteng, according to police spokesman Lieutenant-Colonel Lungelo Dlamini.
He said 42 of them were on the court roll while “95 inquiries involving (Gauteng) members suspected of involvement in corruption are also being dealt with”.
According to the SAPS’s stats, 381 officers were fired throughout the country. This was a marked decrease from the previous year, when 504 members were axed.
* Last week, the head of the Springs detective unit was served with a notice of suspension for links to the two policemen arrested for executing three murder suspects. Labelled the “Bad Boys” of Springs, the two constables, Clement Madondo and Nkopodi Maphale, along with informants Floyd Matlala and Lwazi Ndlangamandla, are awaiting trial for the gruesome torture and execution incident in April.
* Earlier this month, a warrant officer at Morebeng police station in Limpopo was charged with corruption after he was allegedly found assisting a cigarette-smuggling syndicate. This came after 19 other police officials were arrested in the province for their involvement in escorting vehicles carrying illegal cigarettes in exchange for cash.
* In the past three months, four officers were arrested at Honeydew police station and two from the Diepkloof station on corruption-related charges.
* In September last year, 22 SAPS members from Welkom were arrested for alleged involvement in a money-laundering, theft and corruption scheme where gold valued at almost R1 million was seized.
Phiyega talked tough against crooked SAPS officials shaming the service.
“We will continue to do everything possible to uproot the rotten apples,” she said. “I trust that those who remain with the police will realise that management are very serious when we say we do not tolerate criminality. Tsotsi cops erode the trust we are trying hard to built with our communities.”
Disciplinary processes are failing, says expert
While rooting out criminal elements within the SAPS’s ranks should be welcomed, most of the crooked cops get off scot-free because of flawed disciplinary processes.
Gareth Newham, the head of the governance, crime and justice division at the Institute for Security Studies, called for an overhaul of the processes used to dismiss and suspend officers.
He said that while the number of disciplinary hearings had increased over the past few years, the number of dismissals was shockingly low.
Newham said the Scorpions anti-corruption unit had secured hundreds, if not thousands, of convictions and dismissals each year until it was disbanded in 2002.
The number of SAPS members subjected to disciplinary hearings, he said, did not make a significant difference because the most likely outcome was that no sanctions would be imposed on them, with about only one in five eventually being dismissed.
The slowness of the hearings was unfair to officers who were falsely accused, and it also afforded guilty officers more time to potentially meddle with evidence and witnesses.
And while police officials have often claimed there were just a few bad apples within the SAPS, Newham said criminality was “systemic and widespread”.
He believes that if top management were not held accountable when accusations of corruption and criminality arose against them, the fundamental ethos for officers on the ground would be tainted.
“It’s very important that police management ensure that those good officers who are honest and go the extra mile are promoted,” he said, adding that simply punishing the criminal elements wasn’t enough.
The Star