A new study into serious and violent crimes perpetrated by members of South Africa’s police force has revealed that the public’s propensity to distrust and fear the nation’s law enforcement officers is often well placed.
Released today, Broken Blue Line 2 is the second instalment of a two-report project compiled by the Institute of Race Relations that examines police criminality and the official response to it, which the institute claims is falling short of what is required to stamp out the problem.
Although authorities have been making arrests and efforts to clean up the police force, there has been no significant decline in criminality compared to what the first Broken Blue Line report found in 2011, the institute claims.
In the course of their study over a few days, the research team tracked and recorded 100 instances of police officers accused of serious crimes between April 2011 and January 2015. “We are confident if we spent much more time on the search we could have found several hundred more cases,” the authors say.
The breakdown of the 100 confirmed instances show that 32 related to murder and attempted murder, 22 to armed robberies, 26 to rape, and 20 to other crimes ranging from torture to theft and burglaries.
Corruption
In addition, the report cites as further evidence of police corruption data that found its way into the media in 2013 revealing that almost 1,500 serving police officers had criminal records – this is more than one in every 100 sworn-in officers.
To highlight how ineffectual the authorities have been at tackling crime within its ranks, the institute analysed the statistics released by the Independent Police Investigative Directive for the 2013-14 financial year. This revealed that of the 9,055 complaints made to the body, 1,470 criminal recommendations were made to the National Prosecuting Authority but only 83 convictions were secured.
While internal data shows that police authorities were taking more disciplinary action against their members than the directive – in 2014 alone 800 officers were fired for committing crimes – new cases keep emerging.
Criminal gangs
However, the most important finding to emerge from this latest report, the institute says, is the extent that police may have been infiltrated by criminal gangs and syndicates looking for logistical support for their activities.
“What is expected is that the police infiltrate criminal gangs. In South Africa criminal gangs have infiltrated the police,” the report says. “South Africans can no longer be sure in reporting a crime to the police whether they are not reporting to a criminal in uniform.”
As part of its recommendations the institute calls on the police to strengthen its chain of command, develop a university-educated officer corps, better equip the investigative directive, establish a new investigative agency within the department of justice, decentralise decision-making on station leadership and depoliticise the appointment process.
In its conclusion, the report states the government’s inability to tackle police criminality meaningfully was causing a breaking down of the trust between ordinary people and police officers tasked with protecting them. “As confidence in the police falls, the middle classes and private sector will increasingly turn to private security providers to safeguard their lives and possessions . . . On the other side of the socioeconomic spectrum we expect the trend of poor communities resorting to vigilante justice to continue,” it said.
