”If a plumber doesn’t join a pipe correctly, you have a leak; if an electrician doesn’t do it properly, the light doesn’t work. If [metro police officers] make the wrong decision, people get denied their freedoms, or they die if we make the wrong decisions.”
Ekurhuleni metro police chief Robert McBride believes his officers have serious authority, and with it should come stricter codes of conduct.
”Police officers have power, which other citizens don’t have. We have the power to arrest, to search and to interfere with people’s normal lives.”
The South African Police Service (SAPS) has a stricter code of conduct than the metro police service does, says McBride.
Currently, the codes of conduct or the conditions of service for local government officials are all the same, says McBride.
”It takes away the provisions of the [SAPS] Act, which says the chief of police must be responsible,” he adds.
”We, in addition to us being police officers, are also traffic officers. I can inspect a car under the Road Traffic Act, whether it has a spare wheel, which means that I’m in your boot — I can lift your spare wheel up and check if you have guns or drugs, without a search warrant,” says McBride. ”That’s the power I have. That kind of power must be handled with circumspection.”
Birth of the metro police
After the advent of the new government in 1994, crime spiralled higher. Eventually, the provincial legislatures realised that there was a crime-fighting resource available at local government level — the traffic police.
”The main function of the metro police was going to be visible policing and crime prevention. So, while they will do traffic, while they will do by-law enforcements, they will also now — on an equal footing of the other two competencies — do crime prevention and visible policing,” explains McBride.
Though a number of metro or city police forces had already been established, the SAPS Act was amended in 1998 to allow local governments to establish a municipal or metropolitan police force of their own. Both the SAPS and metro police are established under the SAPS Act.
On September 1 this year, the SAPS published its code of conduct for its officers.
”I want the SAPS to dictate to me to use their code of conduct. We are police services, why should we have different standards of policing? You expect the same service from every officer,” says McBride.
The national police commissioner has the authority to enforce national standards at all levels of the metro police.
”I would like to see a more intrusive and assertive national commissioner,” says McBride. ”I want to start some debate on how we can integrate all the police forces in the country to function as one, reporting to the national commissioner.”
At present, McBride reports to the executive director of public safety in the Ekurhuleni city council and the city manager, as well as the Gauteng provincial police commissioner and the provincial minister of safety and security.
‘My hands are tied’
”You can’t have police services across the country that have different conditions of service or codes of conduct. You cannot have it,” says McBride.
When an officer is suspected of wrongdoing, the metro police must first be informed of an intention to suspend the officer.
The officer then has an opportunity to respond and say why he or she should not be suspended — something like ”I actually wasn’t robbing, I was borrowing,” says McBride.
An investigation follows, charges are drawn up and then a disciplinary procedure starts. If an investigation against a police officer takes longer than three months, the suspension is lifted.
”What I want is to be given more authority to nail people who are not professional, who are unethical and who are corrupt. I want to nail them. I don’t want to create my own little kangaroo court,” says McBride.
He says the metro police’s disciplinary procedure, at present, ”gives the idea of impunity”.
”[If you’re a metro officer] you can do whatever you want. You can take a bribe and it will take a long time [for the guilty officer to be disciplined]. They’ll get suspended and will get paid while they are suspended. And because there’s such a big backlog on disciplinary issues, the message going out is that they don’t actually face the music,” he says.
”My hands are tied in that respect,” he says, adding that it is harder to maintain discipline in the force because of a ”tension between the national legislation of the SAPS Act and the contradiction in Salga [the South African Local Government Association, the central bargaining counsel on conditions of service]”.
Salga is currently addressing issues regarding the metro police after it was made aware of the problems that the metro police are facing.
‘We’re humans’
Despite all the recent negative publicity regarding the metro police officers, not all of them accept bribes, steal or are corrupt. Many take their jobs seriously, die in the line of duty and are verbally abused.
”I always leave home praying that God will be with me,” says Johannesburg metro officer Nompumelelo (Penny) Zulu.
Johannesburg, like Los Angeles, is a city of roads. For the 2 000 people, on average, working at the metro police, these roads map out their lives. They risk their lives on the road, and are belittled and made to feel inadequate to the SAPS.
The day starts early for Zulu. The city’s air is filthy and even though it’s summer, it is still cold under the bridge on the freeway from where she is keeping an eye on the early-morning traffic.
Since the inception of the Johannesburg metro police in 2001, nine of their members have died and many are injured in the line of duty.
Johannesburg residents are masters at observing the metro police. When they see a metro police car, they slow down almost immediately, put their seatbelts on and drop the cellphone into which they were yapping. As soon as the police vehicle is out of sight, the speedometer climbs once again and the cellphone is back in hand.
Zulu says she is often still exhausted when she wakes up in the morning, but it’s her duty to go to work to protect and serve the community.
”Even if I have stress, I have to leave the stress at my gate and come to work as Penny,” she says.
Demanding job
Zulu’s been with the metro police for three-and-a-half years and has an eight-year-old daughter who lives with her grandparents in Mpumalanga, because the demands of Zulu’s job are so great.
”If I wake up at 4am every day, who will take care of her during the day?”
Her day consists of waking up at 4am and working the morning shift, which involves patrolling the highways with her partner from 6am till 9am. During the day, she responds to accident calls and complaints.
She believes the metro police ”make people feel safe” when they are visible next to Johannesburg’s roads and highways.
”We are curbing crime a lot, and the visibility in traffic helps [keep down] crime a lot — the visibility counts,” she says. ”I enjoy my job because I learn every day … and I know how to handle matters on the street. This job is a dangerous job.”
She says there are many challenges facing women in the metro police department.
”We have this attitude from women [members of the public] — they undermine us. [Some men] say ‘I love you’, and you just have to ignore that person and continue with your job.”
Another metro police cop, who did not want to be identified, says male members of the public address female officers as ”baby” and call them names. The first thing that greets these men is an officer’s breasts because they get there before she does, she jokes.
However, many people ”respect us in this uniform”, says Zulu. She believes it’s not wise to argue with motorists and that it’s best to stay calm when dealing with them.
Though the metro police are sometimes perceived as corrupt, not all of them accept bribes, says Zulu. She wants people to treat officers ”as human beings” and realise that they’re there to save lives.
‘They like to shout at us’
Edward Matodzi, another metro police officer, says he has been working with the force since it was formed four years ago.
”We are saving the community in different ways,” he says, but some people don’t take the metro police seriously and ”they like to shout at us”.
”People swear at us, especially the ones in the taxis when we stop them. Taxis give us a lot of headaches.”
He tells me he’s going to stop one just for me.
”Here’s one,” he says, stepping into the road and pointing. The taxi quickly hides behind a truck. Matodzi turns to me and yells over the noise of the truck: ”You see, they’re clever.”
He says officers have to maintain eye contact with drivers to be sure they understand that they need to pull over.
He manages to flag down another taxi driver. It almost looks like the taxi won’t stop, but the driver reluctantly comes to a halt, far away from where we are standing. They often park far away to make officers walk to them after they have been pulled over, says Matodzi.
The taxi driver jumps out and shakes hands with us both. He smiles guiltily while Matodzi inspects his vehicle.
Matodzi explains that the driver is not licensed to carry passengers and has fitted a seat in his boot to fit more people into his taxi. He fines the driver R500.
Arrests and dismissals
Although the metro police do the extraordinary and risk their lives, many of them abuse their power and are arrested for assault, rape and corruption.
According to Edna Mamonyane, Johannesburg metro police spokesperson, there have been 81 arrests of ”internal corruption” since January this year. Thirty-four officers have been dismissed for bribery, fraud, theft and rape, and 47 are still under investigation.
When a complaint is laid against an officer, the department’s internal-affairs unit asks the complainant for a written statement, and then the officer in question is allowed to respond. Based on this procedure, the officer is only suspended if he or she is found guilty, says Mamonyane.
If an officer has serious allegations brought against him or her, then an internal investigation is launched, and he or she is suspended until the whole case has been heard.
Recently, the metro police were accused of walking into a restaurant in Norwood’s Grant Avenue and checking if people had outstanding traffic fines. Mamonyane said the police went there to establish if the restaurant had a liquor licence.
”We work every weekend with the liquor board. The public will say anything for them to get support from other people.”
She added that the police would have never disturbed someone who was eating to ask for a licence, or any other documentation.
”It’s so stupid,” she says.
It was a painful experience for some of the diners because the metro police towed their cars away that day, said Mamonyane. Cars were double-parked in the street, turning it into a one-way road. So, police impounded their vehicles.
”There are perpetrators of wrongdoing who cry foul and accuse us of harassing them,” she said.
The police, ”whether they’re SAPS or the metro police, they have powers to do certain jobs. They might be intimidating, but they don’t mean to be intimidating,” she adds.
People should realise that ”behind the uniform, there’s a human” there. Sometimes the public might say something that will make officers ”loose their cool”. But the department always instructs officers to stay calm, says Mamonyane.
”I’ve been there and done that. I know what it’s like. Sometimes people will say, ‘What the hell did you stop me for?’ and don’t think that it’s [our] job to do routine checks,” she said. ”Give them [officers] a chance to do what they trained to do because they’re here to serve and protect.”
Metro police officers earn R64 632 a year at entry level. They are also expected to complete various training programmes, including an advanced driving course, before they are allowed to go out on to the road.
Media ‘keep us on our toes’
The spate of media reports criticising the metro police in the past weeks ”keeps us on our toes”, says McBride.
”If we are doing wrong things, [the media] must criticise us, they must. They can hammer us. If my guys are doing wrong, the [people] must hammer them.”
He believes the public’s negative perception of the metro police can be altered only by the officers’ conduct and that ”no one can do a public-relations exercise other than us, and it’s by our conduct”.
It’s good ”if you find something wrong, because then I can fix it up”, he says.
McBride has developed a standard operation procedure making it a matter of course for a metro police officer to greet possible offenders, introduce himself or herself, show an identity card and explain to offenders why they are being stopped.
All officers have to wear name badges. If they don’t, they must produce their appointment card, says McBride. Each officer must be in the possession of an appointment card at all times.
”Nowhere does it say in any Act how to deal with the public. We are not perfect, we have corruption, we have rude officers, we have criminals among us.
”There’s about 10% that are criminals. I’m going to catch them soon and I hope the asset forfeiture unit takes their houses and cars away. I’m so close to catching some of them. Very close!”
McBride says that his officers work closely with the SAPS.
”We even do joint patrols. Sometimes in my cars I put SAPS members and sometimes my members are in SAPS cars,” he adds.
”The government’s approach is [to] hammer corruption, and that is what I’m doing. I want to be empowered to be able to do that.”
‘I’ve arrested my own people’
McBride says if a person opens a criminal case against one of his officers, and ”it’s not a case of rudeness and it’s actual assault, I’ll send my people to arrest him”.
”I’ve arrested my own people. I’ve arrested two for drunken driving in the last 10 days. Locked them up in front of everybody, boom! Locked them up [and told them] they must go and sleep in the cells … we then hand them over to the SAPS and it is a criminal justice issue,” he adds.
”I police with the people, I don’t police people.”