Cape Town - Community Safety MEC Albert Fritz has called on SAPS to make better use of the Court Watching Brief reports.
The watching briefs initiative was introduced by the Department of Community Safety to act in accordance with the Constitution which provided, inter alia, that every province was entitled to monitor police conduct and report inefficiencies.
During the standing committee on community safety sitting on Tuesday, the department released its report on “Measuring Police Efficiency and Effectiveness in the Western Cape”. The report covered the period of April 2018 and March 2019, the same period monitored by annual crime statistics.
In terms of possession of illegal firearms and ammunition, some of the systematic failures included: 52 cases were struck off the court roll in 2018/19; 32 investigations were incomplete; 16 dockets were not at court; and four forensic reports or ballistic reports were outstanding in the investigation.
A significant number of these cases were recorded in Mitchells Plain, Gugulethu, Nyanga, Philippi and Philippi East, Harare and Manenberg.
The MEC gave a graphic example of how things went wrong as reported by the watching briefs: “In one case of possession of firearm and ammunition recorded at Athlone Court on September 6, 2018 the matter was postponed to September 13, 2018 for bail information and then to October 15, 2018 for a bail application where bail was granted.”
“The matter was postponed to December 11, 2018 then February 5, 2019 for further investigation. On February 5 the accused was not at court and the matter resumed on February 6, but was postponed to February 19 for further investigation. On that date, the matter was postponed to March 26 because the investigation was still not finalised. On March 26 the case was withdrawn because the investigation was incomplete,” said the MEC.
He said, this type of run-around had a catastrophic impact on the criminal justice system and it was vitally important that SAPS acknowledged and addressed it.