Startling statistics on police brutality presented at Parliament showed cases leapt by more than 300% in the past decade.
|||Cape Town - Startling statistics on police brutality were presented at Parliament on Tuesday.
MPs heard that:
* Cases of police brutality leapt by more than 300 percent in the past decade, from 416 during 2001/2002 to 1 722 cases by 2011/2012.
* Of the 720 deaths reported to the Independent Police Investigative Directorate in 2011/2012, one in five involved police criminality.
* Only one out of every 50 people who experienced or witnessed police abuse reported it.
* The SAPS was facing civil claims totalling R1.1 billion related to shooting incidents, and assault cases of more than R800 million.
* Civil claims against the police had doubled in the past two years to R14.8bn.
* Thirty-five percent of citizens interviewed last year were scared of the police and about 41 percent did not trust the police.
The figures were presented to Parliament’s portfolio committee on police by Gareth Newham of the Institute for Security Studies.
“Senior police management have to take full responsibility and be held directly accountable for changing the culture, behaviour and performance of the police,” Newham said.
The committee’s meeting took place as the national police commissioner, General Riah Phiyega, was quizzed at the Farlam Commission of Inquiry into the Marikana massacre on progress in the “urgent demilitarisation” of the police as outlined in the government’s National Development Plan (NDP).
This included “changes in the police insignia, military ranks and force orders to create a civil police service as a first stage of community policing”.
“We have noted the recommendations. We are engaging the NDP, looking at how we can implement those recommendations,” Phiyega said.
Asked whether she agreed with the NDP recommendations, the police chief said: “It is difficult for me to say I agree or I don’t agree. With certain reservations and discussions we will embrace the recommendations.”
“It’s a recommendation and we must embrace it, we must find a way of working around it.” Phiyega said she was leading a team who were “working on the matter”.
The militarisation of the police has been one of the factors identified by analysts as contributing to a culture of brutality.
The police controversially adopted military ranks and styling three years ago at the behest of Police Minister Nathi Mthethwa, who argued this was necessary to improve discipline to win the war against criminals.
“For any force to discharge its task effectively, there needs to be a commander, because wars are led by commanders,” he said.
Former education and water affairs minister Kader Asmal, a long-time human rights activist who has since died, slammed the move, sparking a public confrontation with the then-deputy minister, Fikile Mbalula, who had first mooted the idea.
Mthethwa suggested that the names of potential police recruits be published before they were hired in an effort to weed out bad apples, as applicants’ behaviour was often known to their communities.
After the meeting, veteran DA MP Dianne Kohler Barnard said Mthethwa had seemed underprepared and had presented no plan for dealing with police brutality.
“The minister failed to answer most questions with any detail, but made sweeping, generic statements about training, code of conduct and improving command and control.”
ANC MP Annelize van Wyk, acting chairwoman of the committee, said people felt there was a “lack of consequences” for police who did wrong.
She said the committee’s visit to the Wierda Bridge police station in Centurion had left MPs appalled and distressed.
The visit was spurred by reports of unaccounted-for firearms, an alleged rape at the station of a woman who had gone to report a rape, and the threatening of a woman officer by colleagues after a suspect had been assaulted.
Cape Times