Justice Minister Thembi Simelane. (Photo by Brenton Geach/Gallo Images via Getty Images)
Justice Minister Thembi Simelane says the police cannot be expected to behave like they are “at a picnic” when confronted by criminals and could also not be expected to be “armed with spoons” in a gun battle.
“We are talking about police who are in the battlefield and we want them to behave like they are at a picnic and I don’t think that’s [the message] we want to send … to our police,” Simelane told journalists on the sidelines of a Police and Prisons Civil Rights Union (Popcru) meeting on Thursday.
“There are measures in our Constitution — if there is someone who suspects overreach, the Independent Police Investigative Directorate is there. Police present themselves to Ipid, define the circumstances in a boardroom, not in a war room.”
Simelane spoke in the wake of recent criticism from crime experts who accused police in KwaZulu-Natal of being heavy-handed in apprehending criminals. There have been frequent reports of police in the province being involved in gun battles with armed suspects.
In August, the provincial police commissioner Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi said police were dealing with not just criminals who stole, but hardcore ones who kill.
“We are at war. When you take the war to the criminals as the police, the experts must give us space. This is a battleground and we are fighting; we are not negotiating,” he said.
Simelane defended Mkhwanazi’s stance on Thursday, saying she had never heard him saying police must “go and murder suspects willy-nilly”.
“I heard him saying, if police are supposed to be facing criminals, the police themselves must be empowered to face the situation that is equal to what they have at the particular time to be able to to solve crime,” she said.
“You can’t face them with a teaspoon when someone is carrying a gun; it can’t work.”
Simelani said it was not only in KwaZulu-Natal that police had been forced to respond to violent criminals.
“If you go to the Eastern Cape, there have been arrests that have been made and there have been criminals who have been shooting back at the police.
“What we want to contextualise, as the criminal justice system, is that police are humans too. Police have the rights enshrined in the Constitution,” the minister said.
“Police are not irresponsible, otherwise you would not be alive. I don’t know how many police you passed today — they would have just shot you, you lie dead, and they would pass and shoot the next [person]. They don’t do that.”