Guns stolen from police...
Lynne Finney 1 November 2017
More than
2,000 firearms have been stolen from the South African Police Service (SAPS)
over the course of the past four years, an answer to a parliamentary question
tabled by the country’s official opposition has revealed.
Responding
to a written question from the Democratic Alliance (DA), Police Minister Fikile
Mbalula said that 602 police guns went missing in 2014/15, 630 were stolen in
2015/16 and 537 disappeared in 2016/17. Some 248 have vanished since the
beginning of April this year, Mbalula said.
“The reality
is that the SAPS is fuelling the illegal arms trade. Thousands of SAPS firearms
have been stolen over the past 20 years, and are out there in the hands of
criminals shooting at the police, and at you and me,” said Kohler Barnard, who
shadows the deputy police minister for the DA.
“This high number of ‘missing’ firearms goes far
beyond the occasional case of negligence, and is evidence of a problem that is
not unrelated to high levels of corruption and criminality within the SAPS.”
