In the rush to increase the numbers of police officers on the streets, a worrying factor emerging was that the SA Police Service was cutting down on the time spent by new recruits at training academies, MPs heard on Wednesday.
”We have a situation now where recruits only spend three months — down from six — at training academies. People are coming straight from the college into the detective services without ever being in uniform… and make mistakes,” said Ted Leggett, a senior researcher at the Institute for Security Studies (ISS).
The ISS was briefing the portfolio committee on safety and security on its latest review of the criminal justice system.
According to statistics as of January 2003 there were 129 722 police members, of which 80 000 were uniformed, 22 000 were detectives and 27 000 were civilians.
This meant there was one policeman for every 439 South Africans, with plans to increase them by 40 500 by 2005.
This meant training about 18 000 police members per year for the next three years, so that the eventual ratio would be one policeman for every 373 citizens, said Leggett.
While the number of crimes recorded have decreased from 1994, it was possibly not a real reflection of true crime in the country.
”This is because for a crime to be recorded police must open a docket or a member of the public must lay a complaint,” he said.
Police fared worse in 2001/2002 in their fight against organised crime than the previous year.
”In 2001/2002 there were 21 undercover operations conducted, 230 syndicates exposed and 85 syndicate leaders prosecuted. In the previous year there were 54 operations, 388 syndicates exposed and 233 leaders jailed.”
He questioned the low conviction rate of 34% for the 2 887 drug cases in 2001/2002. It indicated there was suppression of evidence due to error. Leggett said the ISS was concerned that police still had no anti-rape strategy and viewed crimes against women and children as ”less policeable”.
He said the issues to be watched in the next year included training, sector policing, the deployment of new recruits, detective restructuring, implementation of new legislation around firearms, domestic violence, child justice, and sexual offenders. – Sapa