Up to 10% of all policemen in South Africa are either criminal or corrupt and these problems are systemic and entrenched in all police stations, says Cape Town criminologist Liza Grobler.
Cops across the country interviewed by Grobler told her that criminality in the police is ”chronic” and occurs ”in every unit and in every police station”.
Grobler, who now lectures at City Varsity in Cape Town, found that the low morale in the South African Police Service impacts hugely on corruption.
”There is a problem with the general management style in the police. If people are treated with disrespect they will react by being ill disciplined.
”Police in the Western Cape are under enormous pressure to perform. It is important to look at the way management in the province treats its staff. If this is improved a lot of misconduct will disappear.
”There is no support culture in the SAPS. Managers do not care about their staff. This is evident among detectives where the average detective has to handle 80 or more dockets a month — the international average is 24. The minister for safety and security and the [former] national commissioner are not policemen, they do not understand the police,” Grobler said.
She also found that three years ago there were 1 300 police in the Western cape with no formal detective training.
Peter Gastrow, head of the Institute for Security Studies in Cape Town, said this week that the SAPS is ”a rudderless police service because of the crisis of leadership, which needs to be addressed urgently if the public is to be persuaded that the government is serious and has the will to combat crime”.
Gastrow said the police are ”haemorrhaging” confidence. ”There is no leadership or political response to the public’s cry for strong leadership and it’s really serious,” he said.
”I can say that the current environment — with the national police commissioner facing corruption charges — leads to a drop in efficiency and to more policemen taking short cuts. I wouldn’t be surprised if evidence tampering and witness assaults are on the increase,” Gastrow said.
Last year during the Inge Lotz murder trial Fred van der Vyfer was acquitted after the court heard that Van der Vyfer’s fingerprints had been planted on a CD-cover.
Van der Vyfer’s father spent R9-million successfully defending his son’s innocence.
Forensic investigator David Klatzow was briefly employed by the Van der Vyfer family during the trial.
He said: ”The cops are in deep trouble. They will alter any evidence if they can because scientific integrity has taken a back seat during investigations. The police force is being hijacked by crooks and the public have less and less confidence in the cops.”
Klatzow said during apartheid it was the same. ”Then the police also lied about how [ANC activist] Ashley Kriel was shot in cold blood by a policeman [in the 1980s]; about how the Gugulethu Seven were killed by the cops. Today the police are still falsifying evidence and the only difference now is that the forensic laboratories are 66% worse off than they were then because they are so behind on cases. It can take up to two-and-half years now before one gets a blood-alcohol sample back from the lab,” Klatzow said.
”What example are Jackie Selebi and Robert McBride setting? If you have a thousand litres of the best Cape Town wine and you pour one litre of shit into it, you have 1 001 litres of shit — the same goes for the police,” he said.
Last year 5Â 500 South Africans laid complaints with the Independent Complaints Directorate against the police. By far the highest number of complaints received against the police every year is for serious assault (30%), followed by common assault (14%) and attempted murder (12%).