EThekwini municipal manager Mike Sutcliffe is sitting on a damning Independent Complaints Directorate (ICD) report detailing “lax control” of hundreds of firearms and ammunition issued by the state to the Durban Metro Police Service.
The report lists 66 state-issued firearms as missing and being investigated by the police. It suggests metro police managers are colluding with corrupt officers by supplying the ICD with fake case numbers for missing firearms.
The ICD also reports that Durban South police are using their personal firearms for official duties and officers are stealing recovered and declared firearms.
The investigators also found a stock of military artillery and assault rifles, including R1s, that are not issued to the metro police. Metro police management could not account for these.
Sutcliffe called in the ICD in June to probe the police department, after media reports that guns under police control had fallen into the wrong hands and some had been used in cash-in-transit heists.
The ICD recommended that metro police management “take appropriate steps against its members who have contravened policies and regulations of the institution and the Firearms Control Act”.
However, Sutcliffe has yet to release the ICD’s findings. He has also shielded Metro police head Eugene Nzama amid mounting calls from opposition parties for his resignation.
This week Sutcliffe said he was surprised the ICD had released its report without allowing the city to release a simultaneous response. “The report makes no sense without the city’s side of the story,” he said.