Cape Town – The police’s top brass filed an application for leave to appeal an Equality Court judgment which found the allocation of policing in the province discriminated against poor black people.
The move has angered the Social Justice Coalition (SJC), which said it was disappointed in the Minister of Police, the National Police Commissioner and the Western Cape Police Commissioner.
The judgment, which is expected to be challenged in the Supreme Court of Appeal, relates to alleged unfair allocation of police resources in poor black areas.
The SJC, Equal Education and the Nyanga Community Policing Forum had argued the police’s system of determining the allocation of police human resources unfairly discriminated against black and poor people on the basis of race and poverty.
Judge MJ Dolamo had found in favour of the applicants and declared both that the allocation of police human resources in the Western Cape unfairly discriminated against black and poor people on the basis of race and poverty; and the system employed by police in the province to determine the allocation of the police human resources unfairly discriminated against black and poor people on the basis of race and poverty.
“In appealing these declarations the state will only delay the equitable delivery of services to poor, black people. Communities rendered most vulnerable by poverty and unbearable levels of violent contact crimes and murder will be left in life-threatening situations because the SAPS continues, again, to ignore and undermine the findings of other organs of state and constitutionally mandated bodies. This is unconscionable,” the SJC said.
In their appeal, the Minister of Police, the National Police Commissioner and the Western Cape Police Commissioner argued the court had made a premature finding, as the time frame given to the police by the Khayelitsha Commission to implement remedial measures not had expired.
"The commission had been set up in 2012 to probe allegations of inefficiencies. In their papers before the SCA, police said they were working on measures to improve policing and that the process of 'overhauling' was time-consuming.
“The prematurity argument should have been upheld in the circumstances since once the process is complete, the allocation policy may be different to the one before the court,” they argued.