More than 53 000 South African Police Service (SAPS) members have been charged with some form of criminal offence since 2000, the Democratic Alliance said on Thursday.
”This is 40% of the total of 134 857 current SAPS members. Of these members charged, 6 123 were found guilty of criminal offences, while 9 699 cases are either before the courts or pending a decision by the Directorate of Public Prosecutions,” said DA MP Roy Jankielsohn in a statement.
Jankielsohn was quoting statistics released by Minister of Safety and Security Charles Nqakula on Thursday in reply to a question in Parliament in December.
Jankielsohn said these charges waste valuable crime-fighting manpower.
The figures show that while many complaints are laid, very few officers are found guilty after a lengthy investigation.
While some of the charges are a result of police misconduct, many are simply the result of suspects laying counter-charges when they are arrested.
”Mechanisms need to be put in place to differentiate between the two types of cases and have them speedily dealt with, since both are bad for morale,” he said.
Jankielsohn also noted that these cases place a budgetary strain on the Independent Complaints Directorate, which has to investigate all of them.
He said that while funding for the body — responsible for investigating complaints against police — has only increased by 13%, its workload has jumped by 42%.
According to the detailed written response to the question raised by DA MP Manie van Dyk, 2 655 police officers were charged with corruption, of whom 130 were found guilty and 2 471 were found not guilty and remain in the service.
Among other charges laid were:
- 792 of aiding an escape, of which 75 resulted in a guilty verdict, 197 not guilty verdicts, and the rest pending;
- 1 628 of defeating the course of justice, of which 149 resulted in guilty verdicts;
- 704 of intimidating suspects, 30 of which resulted in guilty verdicts.
Superintendent Ronnie Naidoo from police headquarters in Pretoria confirmed there are many cases where police are the victims of counter-charges from suspects. — Sapa