SOUTH AFRICA’S police unions have warned that the recent disarming by senior management of a fifth of the country’s 160,000- strong police force, for not completing a firearms competency course, will cause chaos.
In recent weeks more than 27,000 police officers have been stripped of their service pistols because they have not completed the mandatory five-day competency course for handguns, rifles and shotguns.
The gun ban has hit members of elite crime fighting units, as well as ordinary officers whose test scores did not reach 100 per cent and 70 per cent respectively.
Of the fifth of officers disarmed, it is understood that 6,000 of them failed the test that all members of the force have to take under South Africa’s firearms control act, before being issued with a weapon.
Police unions have heavily criticised the move by senior management, saying many officers involved in essential police work are refusing to take to the streets without their weapons due to the danger of fighting crime in South Africa.
While violent crimes have been reduced significantly since the mid- 1990s, the latest statistics show that just under 16,000 murders are still committed each year. In the past five years, more than 100 officers a year on average have lost their lives in the line of duty.
An officer with the elite crime fighting unit, the Hawks, who did not want to be named, told the Times newspaper that affected officers had been sitting at their desks and “will not put our lives in danger by going out unarmed”.
Earlier this week the Police and Prisons Civil Rights Union wrote to the safety and security sectoral bargaining council calling for it to urgently intervene to avoid a “catastrophe”.
Institute for Security Studies policing researcher Johan Burger said the development would also have negative effects on public safety, because police visibility on the streets would be diminished significantly.
