Publications
Partners
ANOTHER day, another ‘bad police’ story, this one in Knysna, where police threatened to arrest a man (possibly for being threatened while Coloured?) while allowing his harasser with a gun to walk free.
Two or three weeks ago it was the police walking away from a terribly abused and injured woman in fear for her life – because it was ‘domestic violence’.
A month earlier, it was police taking orders to fire rubber bullets on a crowd of unarmed protesters – from a civilian, eye-witnesses told me, the local councillor. The same councillor who, a few weeks later, was brandishing a gun and throwing stones at a community member he’s taken against… and the local police refused to take action. (I am fairly sure a charge of pointing a gun would have been appropriate?)
The community member now goes everywhere with an escort – a stark illustration of how vigilante justice can be birthed by a realistic distrust in the police who are charged with protecting us.
Paul McNally’s book, The Street: Exposing a World of Cops, Bribes and Drug Dealers (Pan Macmillan, 2016), is a frightening exposé of the ‘bad’ police. Courtesy of an angry shopkeeper, Raymond, McNally found himself watching, for the best part of two years, as police took bribes from drug dealers on Ontdekkers Road, the big access route running from Westdene past the Sophiatown police station on its way to Krugersdorp’s fringes; it’s also within the catchment area of Florida police station, startlingly close to home for me.
It’s utterly disheartening what McNally learns about the police from Raymond and another angry man, policeman Khaba, who wants desperately to ‘clean up’ the South African Police Service (Saps). Corruption’s stain spreads right through the force, from top to bottom. One constable called Lerato (at my own police station, nogal!) is married to a drug lord, and she rules the roost: no one has yet managed to discipline her or catch her out.
Spine-chilling stories punctuate the text, like this one, when Raymond thought he’d helped cops set up a bust: “We soon found out that the officers were only pretending to arrest the dealer. They took the dealer a short distance along Ontdekkers Road where they forced him to phone Chuba, his drug lord boss. Then they tortured him. They wanted the dealer screaming while they negotiated a price with Chuba for his release. From his shop, Raymond could hear the young man… In this instance, an amount of R6 000 was paid to the police to release the dealer.”
Corruption aside, there are insights into criminally stupid police procedures and policies (forgive the pun). Like targets. The police are apparently set weekly and monthly targets for various crimes, year on year – you want to hit your target exactly rather than going over or under. Over, and the target will be higher for the same period next year; under, and you’re in trouble with the bosses.
Fortunately for the police, the parameters are stupid: for drug-related arrests, a user’s as good as a dealer or a drug lord:
“If you have to arrest 10 drug cases a week, is it really in your interest to close down the den?” a local community policing forum member says to McNally. “I personally think this target system is making our officers not want to dig too deep. It isn’t like a big bust counts for 10 – if you do that, then you are killing your other nine chances necessary to fill that week’s quota.”
How does this spur police officers to do actual investigations, to take the time and do the work and build the case? This must be deeply frustrating for those who join the police with some idea of making a difference, or even those who simply want to feel that they’ve done a halfway decent job. And I know there are many in Saps, like Khaba, who do, who fight the temptations posed by the nexus of terrible salaries and criminal money, in the belief that they should “serve and protect”.
Fair, competent and credible policing is part of the bedrock of a functioning, flourishing society. How can we expect to get beyond the current morass of incompetence and corruption in the greater society, when the rot goes so deep in the police force?
A friend told me how she saw her organisation’s solar panels being made off with, and phoned the police to tell them to come and arrest the robbers, who she could still see with her naked eye. The response? “We need more intelligence.” Well, yes. You certainly do. Intelligence and motivation and integrity and a sense of service to the community, not just the powerful and the rich.
“The police have become a set of values and a population that we are forced to live with. We are required to move around them as quietly as possible. We are expected to believe that for them to abuse their powers is perfectly within their mandate,” writes McNally, after a personal experience of this abuse. “Ever since there is a helplessness that creeps around inside me and whispers that we are trapped and have no way to fight our way out.” Yes. That’s my sense of despair.
Please, acting Commissioner Khomotso Phahlane, read this book, act on this information. You owe it to the decent people in the force, as much as to the rest of us, to shake this up and make this right.
