Cape Town - The Independent Police Investigative Directorate (Ipid) is facing accusations that it is dragging its feet on its investigation regarding the case of murder where a 9-year-old boy, was allegedly shot dead by the police during a protest in Laingville in St Helena Bay.
Leo Williams was hit by a stray bullet after violent protests broke out in the area, and died after fighting for his life for two weeks in hospital.
Jennifer Ntlatseng, executive director for Ipid met with Williams' family and some community members, where they questioned her on the urgency of the case.
A community leader Thyrone Williams, said the community was disappointed about the visit, "it wasn't what we expected."
Thyrone said there was nothing new that Ntlatseng brought to them, she only told of what they already knew, that they were still investigating the case.
"Why no arrests have been made and why no urgency has been given to this case after a whole month and several weeks," he said, Ipid was dragging its feet on their investigation.
Leo's mother Cathy Thomas, said the family need justice for their son and for arrests to be made.
"I was hoping for more definitive answers like whether arrests were made or not," Thomas said.
Ntlatseng said the investigation into Williams' death was at an advanced stage, and that the Ipid officials would be reconstructing the crime scene with the family's help tomorrow.
"The difficulty about investigation is that you can not just wake up and deal with it immediately, especially when a local police station is not involved. If it was only officers from a local station it was going to be quickly, but this time we are dealing with public order policing based at the provincial level," she said.
She said there were also a number of platoons that came through to deal with the unrest in the area, "hence it takes too long because you must determine which platoon has released or discharged the bullet on that particular day."
"The other thing that is also delaying, that we are trying to move speedily on, is around the post-mortem, which is the nth degree one, which will determine the founder of the firearm that allegedly shot the child," Ntlatseng said.
Cathy Thomas the mother of the late Leo Williams who died at Red Cross Children's Hospital on Tuesday after he was shot with a stray rubber bullet at home.
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Ipid spokesperson Ndileka Cole said as part of her outreach plan which seeks to ensure that she provides strategic direction to the province based teams on the vision, mitigating strategies on challenges that were currently encountered by various provinces in the quest of policing the police and ensuring justice was served for victims as well as their families, Ntlatseng met with the Western Cape Management this week.
She said Ntlatseng has also identified various policy interventions for the next five years that would enhance and fast track the cases that Ipid is dealing with.
"These strategies include engaging communities on issues related to safety to ensure that people know about the services of Ipid, empower communities on reporting procedures, violence prevention, community safety forums as well as working together with local government structures to enhance community participation to enhance rural safety strategy."
Cape Argus