Police Minister Bheki Cele has come under fire for refusing to disclose the number of police officers who have been criminally charged over the past few years.
MPs from the EFF and Freedom Front Plus wrote to Cele enquiring about the number of officers who were arrested for various crimes.
Freedom Front Pus MP Pieter Groenewald asked about officers arrested for murder, robbery, rape, stock theft, farm murders, cash-in transit heists and kidnappings in the three financial years.
The EFF’s MP Laetitia Arries enquired about the number of officers who were successfully prosecuted and dismissed in the past five years, while her colleague Phiwaba Madokwe wanted to know about the statistics of officers found to be on the wrong side of the law in the past five years.
In his response, Cele said the SAPS was fully aware of the implications of criminal charges against the police officers in terms of the impact on the reputation of the SAPS and confidence and trust the public had in the officers.
“The SAPS is, however, equally aware of the need for the criminal allegations against its members to be thoroughly investigated without fear or favour.
“It is for this reason that the mandates of certain law enforcement capabilities such as the Independent Police Investigative Directorate, the Directorate for Priority Crime Investigation and the risk and integrity management component enable them to investigate certain types of criminal cases against SAPS members, including serious criminal charges, serious corruption, organised crime, commercial crime and integrity-corruption related charges,” he said.
Cele also said the SAPS had established a system of tracking criminal charges against officers.
This needed to be verified at police stations.
“The division for detective and forensic services has, therefore, already established nodal points at national and provincial levels that are currently undertaking the verification process.
“This verification has already revealed certain discrepancies in the data that has been captured on the system, and the detective service national and provincial nodal points are engaged in a thorough review of the actual docket and the correction of inconsistencies.
“This is in order to validate the data and eliminate the risks associated with providing inaccurate information.”
According to Cele, in the absence of meticulous and stringent validation, inaccurate data may harm the reputation of innocent police officers. He indicated that the requested information would be available in September.
Groenewald said Cele had used a flawed system as an excuse to cover up the extent of the problem.
“It comes down to the fact that there are separate systems for the various different divisions and levels in the police force on which the relevant data is stored, but there is no final, reliable database,” he said.
He noted with concern that Cele still needed to gather, control and verify all information before a validation process was in place.
“The FF Plus finds the situation alarming, and wants the minister to indicate how long the police's top management has been aware of the current system's shortcomings.
“It is unacceptable that the minister of police has no clear idea of the extent of criminality among his members as he does not have access to a comprehensive database that is regularly updated,” Groenewald said.
Cape Times