Police involvement with crime syndicates lies behind some of the recent attacks on policemen. Paul Stober reports
INFORMATION linking some policemen killed in attacks this year to criminal gangs prompted Minister of Safety and Security Sydney Mufamadi and PWV premier Tokyo Sexwale this week to blame organised crime for the murder of South African Police Service (SAPS) officers.
Sources close to the SAPS and the ministry confirmed that investigations into selected attacks on police had revealed that some of the officers had had links with crime syndicates involved in drug smuggling, gun running and theft.
And it is believed that as yet unproved revelations by Sexwale that druglords were planning to assassinate him and undermine the PWV regional government — to halt the regional administration’s anti-crime drive — was based on information provided by policemen involved in the drug syndicates.
However, the sources insisted that only a few of the recent attacks on officers could be linked to police involvement in crime and that gangs could not be blamed for most of the killings. At least 160 policemen have been killed since the beginning of the year, at least 11 in the past week.
During a snap debate in parliament on Tuesday, Mufamadi blamed organised crime for the murder of policemen: ”I do believe these killings do not reflect community antagonism towards the police, but rather the extent to which those involved in organised crime are threatened by improved relations between the police and the community.” The minister was scheduled to meet regional police commissioners yesterday to discuss ways to halt the killings.
Policing Research Project co-ordinator Melanie Lue indicated that police involvement in criminal activity had been well documented: ”Low morale, poor pay and insecurity about the future has led to a situation where policemen will dip into the evidence to get rich quick. Communities then continue to see the police as criminals.”
* SAPS spokesman Dave Bruce said the police had not received any evidence directly linking the killings to organised crime. He accepted that policemen could be involved in crime ”because the SAPS is a microcosm of a society where there is crime”, but insisted the police had not been able to link the deaths of any policemen to their involvement in organised crime.
Bruce said the murders of policemen would only stop once the police, political parties and communities had gone through a process which ended the lingering perception of the SAPS as ”the enemy”.