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The high cost of corrupt cops

SOUL City. Not the TV series, the informal settlement. I’m with Community-led animal welfare again (CLAW, affiliated with the International Fund for Animal Welfare), here to do a mobile clinic on World Rabies Day.

It heartens me to see just how many people there are, in places like this where the poverty is so desperate, who love their animals and do as much as they can to take care of them. They turn up in droves to queue in the sun for vaccinations, tick control and rabies shots.

The dogs’ names are meant to convey their tough watchdog role: Danger, Diehard, Boxer, Rocky. But in many cases, their wagging tails and gentle eyes say something quite different: I’m a loved and loving dog.

But all too often, there’s just not enough food for anyone.

Thin dogs, thin children, old people composed of little but bone and leather. Hardly surprising that there are relatively high levels of crime here.

In fact, the poor are far and away the biggest targets crime, including murder, according to recently published crime stats: “Research by the ISS indicates that 73% of murders take place in just 25% of police areas and residents in low-income areas are far more likely to be murdered than their middle and high-income counterparts.”

So roughly 36 murder victims out of the 49 a day in South Africa are poor people.

I’ve heard some terrible stories in the last few weeks, travelling through the skein of informal and semi-formal settlements that skirts Johannesburg to the west and south. Thanks to CLAW (which has excellent relationships with many poor communities) I’ve been hearing direct testimony about crime in these areas.

Perhaps the most horrifying thing I’ve heard is a single repetitive note: complaints about inadequate or, worse, corrupt policing.

There’s a woman who sees a crime committed every day, a crime that is itself corruption. She should tell the police, of course; but she claims she sees the police arrive in their turn to take their cut, so who should she tell?

If anyone finds out she blew the whistle, her life and the lives of her family will be forfeit, she believes. Poor people don’t get witness protection or private security to guard their kids en route to school. Their huge vulnerability relative to the middle class is as powerful a marker of inequality as income is.

In 2013, the South African Police Service (Saps) said there were about 1 400 cops, something like 1% of the service, who had been convicted of a crime. (They were supposed to have been evaluated and the service ‘cleaned up’ by June 2014, but that doesn’t seem to have happened – I’m open to correction, though.)  

How many are corrupt but never convicted? I know that my evidence for this is ‘only anecdotal’ – I have no direct evidence – but it’s coming at me in such a tidal wave of similar stories that it’s pretty convincing.

If whistleblowers are afraid to come forward, and corruption reaches as high as station command, how would Saps be able to accurately assess the levels? And even if all these stories only represent, say, one in 20 police officers (just 5%!), that’s seriously damaging to our society, our justice system and our economy.

I’m told, for example, that some police take bribes from the ‘zama-zamas’, the illegal miners who become newsworthy when they’re killed or trapped in an underground fall. The zama-zamas are the visible tip of a huge criminal iceberg.

Organised crime, illegal weapons, gang warfare… In a paper from 2011 on organised crime in Italy, Paulo Pinotti wrote that “the presence of mafia lowers GDP per capita by 16%” (read the paper to see how the presence of organised crime creates a net loss of economic activity).

Just a day or so after the stats were released, an anonymous Gauteng flying squad commander was quoted in a daily paper: “… criminal gangs were running circles around the police, exploiting loopholes in the intelligence community.

‘They have better intelligence than we do and use their resources far better than we do, exploiting our weaknesses for their gains'." If a potentialy significant level of police corruption is added to the mix, we’re in serious trouble.

The impact of this possible police corruption is also damaging to our social fabric – with huge domino effects down the years. Appalling vigilante action is one direct consequence – if communities feel abandoned and betrayed by the police, mob justice will ensue.

How would you react if your mother was brutally raped in her own home, and the police failed to come or open a docket (as, community members allege, they had failed so many in your community before)? How would you react if a known criminal was caught for possession of illegal weapons – and then you hear he “paid that police R10 000, and now he’s out”? (The wry, resigned chuckle accompanying this comment spoke volumes.)

The communities know who’s on the take, and who’s paying them. If youngsters living in this hopeless, relentless, endless poverty see corruption as normal, indeed successful, they will grow up corrupt themselves.

And of course, it’s damaging to the morale of the many decent police officers.

The creeping economic and social damage caused by community perceptions of police corruption is huge already. We simply have to get a handle on it now, before it becomes completely unmanageable.

What are your views on this? Let us knowand you could get published.

*Mandi Smallhorne is a versatile journalist and editor. Views expressed are her own. Follow her on twitter.

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