Thousands of crooked police officers escape dismissal from the South African Police Service due to a loophole in police disciplinary measures. Paul Kirk reports
Some of South Africa’s most notoriously crooked police members are escaping censure and staying on full pay as they exploit a loophole in the disciplinary regulations of the South African Police Service (SAPS).
According to the regulations, there are only two ways police officers can be dismissed – if they are convicted of a crime which does not carry the option of a fine, or if a disciplinary hearing has found them guilty of gross misconduct. Unlike the Labour Relations Act, the disciplinary code of the SAPS stipulates that a police officer must be at the disciplinary hearing for it to be legally binding.
A loophole in police disciplinary codes allows a member of the SAPS to postpone his or her disciplinary hearings indefinitely – until they instead obtain lucrative discharges on medical grounds. All they need do is report sick before they are served papers and stay ill.
While staying on sick leave errant police officers can pocket full salaries with all the fringe benefits. A Mail & Guardian investigation has found that the police rarely dismiss crooked cops through disciplinary hearings, allowing errant officers to remain on full pay for years.
Three months ago the M&G reported how a large number of senior Durban North police officers were to be charged with gross misconduct after they turned the station’s cells into a luxurious hotel for awaiting-trial drug dealers. The officers allowed the dealers to bring big-screen televisions, telephones, weightlifting equipment and unlimited amounts of alcohol into their cells where all-night orgies were held with other drug dealers and the cops.
During one of the all-night parties one police officer allowed a prisoner, a suspect in a fraud case, to escape out the open front door of the station.
This week all but one of the disgraced officers escaped prosecution and dismissal from the police by booking off sick only days before they were to be indicted to appear before a disciplinary tribunal.
Police human resources representative Superintendent Johan Smal said this week that a disciplinary hearing cannot be held in the absence of the defendant. “We will give the accused a reasonable time to come to a hearing. If he cannot do this due to medical reasons, then he or she will be discharged on medical grounds,” Smal added.
The difference, in financial terms, between being discharged on medical grounds and being dismissed is striking. According to police finance department sources the pay-out to some officers is often “comfortably into six figures”.
At the moment a number of allegedly crooked policemen have been awaiting handsome medical disability pay-outs for some time. The most high profile of these are the members of the Durban organised crime unit who claim to have fallen ill before they could be indicted.
When Inspector Joe Kitching of the unit allegedly assisted drug dealer Andre Vogel to murder a Gauteng bouncer, Billy van Vuuren, it seemed certain Kitching would be thrown out the police.
Less than a year later, when he was caught red-handed robbing a drug dealer of his stock and day’s takings, his fate seemed sealed. Today Kitching is a happy man. He has been charged with robbery for the incident with the drug dealer but is still drawing a handsome salary from the police.
He developed a severe case of stress before he could be indicted to appear before a disciplinary tribunal. The fine he is likely to receive from the courts will easily be offset by his package from the police.
Kitching’s boss, Captain Corrie Botha, also escaped seemingly certain dismissal. Botha was not only fingered for assisting Vogel to murder Van Vuuren, he is also under investigation for, among other things, selling narcotics – and supplying them free to his 16-year-old daughter.
Botha also now suffers from severe stress and is awaiting a discharge on medical grounds. When Botha’s boss, the commander of the Durban organised crime unit, Superintendent Andrew Ludick, was investigated for theft and fraud he too missed his day in court when a sudden and severe case of stress left him too ill to attend any trial. According to police sources Ludick is to receive his pay-out within days.
Like all of his sick colleagues Ludick’s former boss, Piet Meyer, the disgraced provincial commander of the organised crime unit, is still drawing his full salary.
Meyer though is not suffering from stress. Though out on bail for 17 counts of fraud, defeating the ends of justice and theft, he may in fact even be able to apply for his old job back.
While criminal charges are being formulated against him, none of the current charges are likely to result in him going to jail.
As yet Durban police management have yet to indict Meyer, or any of his co-accused from the organised crime unit, on disciplinary charges. Even if found guilty of the crimes Meyer cannot be sacked from the police unless he goes to jail – an unlikely possibility.
Said one source in the police legal department: “Management will say they cannot proceed against the organised crime crowd until the criminal matters involving them are finalised. But that is bollocks. A full bench of the Labour Court has decided that the employer does not need to wait for the outcome of a criminal case before proceeding with the disciplinary hearing.”
Meyer would not be the only police officer with a criminal record to hold high office in Durban. Nearly two years ago Superintendent Johan van der Westhuizen was shortlisted for the job of commander of the Durban flying squad. Van der Westhuizen was at one time the commander of the police station at Durban International airport, charged with cracking down on smuggling.
Van der Westhuizen was arrested by the commercial crime unit and convicted of breaking South Africa’s foreign exchange regulations when he tried to smuggle hundreds of thousands of rands on to an international flight. It was never explained where the money came from.
Though he never got the flying squad job, Van der Westhuizen remains a cop and is tipped to succeed the current flying squad commander.