Paul Kirk
The ease with which a child molester can escape prosecution came into sharp focus this week when a lowly suspected car thief was caught red-handed with a sensitive and stolen police investigation docket into the rape of a teenage girl.
Had the docket not been recovered the rapist may well have escaped scot-free – as hundreds do. Up to 500 investigation dockets are lost every year, many of which are stolen to protect well-heeled criminals who bribe police.
Police told the Mail & Guardian that murder dockets and those involving child abuse have the highest price tags. Murder dockets have great value because of the long jail terms a murderer can face, child abuse dockets because of the harsh treatment a criminal can expect in jail.
The discovery of the docket was made entirely by chance in the early hours of Saturday morning when the police dog unit in Durban pulled over a suspicious motor car in Kwa-Mashu. While searching the vehicle the docket, compiled by the Child Protection Unit, was found in the cubbyhole.
The investigating officer, Director Todd Soomaroo, told the M&G that while there was no indication the docket was sold to destroy the investigation, he would personally be investigating the issue.
“At this stage the docket is being held in a secure place and the issue will be investigated.
“But at this stage I am afraid I can give you very little information on the investigation. We view this in a serious light,” said Soomaroo.
How serious can be gauged by the fact that Soomaroo, one of KwaZulu-Natal’s top detectives and most senior policemen, has personally taken over the investigation.
The suspected car thief has been charged with being in possession of stolen property in relation to the docket. Normally such a charge would be investigated by a more junior policeman. Police say they are anxious to discover how the docket came into the suspect’s possession.
Reacting to the slew of investigation dockets that go missing, the Police and Prisons Civil Right Union (Popcru) called for senior police management to be charged with defeating the ends of justice.
Popcru national representative Siyavuya Sineke told the M&G that his union had been inundated with calls from “dedicated members who work hard to gather this information only to have the dockets stolen by crooked colleagues”.
He said 900 dockets disappeared from only four provinces between January 1997 and December 1999.
Saying that he did not want to “name names” Sineke told the M&G his union would like to see police management charged with defeating the ends of justice as he felt they had failed to address the situation.
“By not acting harshly management has sent out the message they condone this sort of thing.”
In KwaZulu-Natal, Chatsworth was among the worst police stations for losing dockets. Those close to the ongoing probe into rampant corruption at that station have told the M&G that dockets were allegedly being sold for as little as R30 for drunken driving cases up to R2 000 for dockets involving murder and armed robbery.
Chatsworth had nearly its entire officer corps transferred to other police stations earlier this year. The move was a bid to curb the allegedly widespread corruption at the station.