R10 to evade law
January 28 2014 at 07:43am
By SHAUN SMILLIE
By SHAUN SMILLIE
THE STAR
A Joburg
metro police department cop holds a R10 note in her hand she had accepted from
a motorist who was stopped at a roadblock in Roodepoort. The motorist says the
bribe was to prevent being fined for a broken accelerator pedal. Picture.:
Chris Collingridge
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Johannesburg -
For the price of a loaf of bread, a Joburg metro police officer allows a
motorist to escape sanction for breaking the law.
But when she
accepted that R10 note, she didn’t know that 100m away from her – hiding behind
a wall – was a team from The Star on a mission to document police corruption.
She wasn’t the
only law enforcement officer caught red-handed. Over a period of several weeks,
the team didn’t observe only her, but saw SAPS members solicit and receive
bribes as they manned roadblocks on Durban Deep Road, between Bramfischerville
and Matholesville, in the greater Roodepoort area.
The officers
manning these roadblocks, according to Major-General Oswald Reddy, had been
drawn from across the Honeydew policing cluster to conduct operations in the
area. And the officers appear to have got away with their crimes.
THE
STAR
A special undercover
operation to catch them in the act failed.
The Star was
asked by Reddy, the Honeydew cluster commander, to hold off on publishing the
story so that his officers could arrest the corrupt officers in a sting
operation.
On New Year’s
Eve, SAPS anti-corruption personnel travelling in a decoy Kombi drove through a
roadblock manned by the suspected policemen several times, hoping to be
stopped.
But the
suspects, according to Reddy, did not stop the Kombi, which had been kitted out
with recording equipment, with the undercover officers carrying marked
banknotes.
The sting
couldn’t be repeated because the officers manning the roadblocks had to be
returned to the police stations in the cluster from which they had been drawn.
“We really
wanted to catch these officers in the act rather than suspend them, but
unfortunately our operation wasn’t successful,” he said.
The Star’s
investigation began after residents revealed how police officers were setting
up roadblocks in a particular spot on Durban Deep Road, where they could
regularly be seen accepting money from motorists.
It didn’t take
long before The Star team, too, spotted money being exchanged between motorists
and police.
On the
afternoon of November 8 we watched three police vans, from the Randburg,
Honeydew and Florida stations, arrive at the spot and set up a roadblock.
The
stop-and-search lasted just 25 minutes, but during that time, The Star saw a
policeman extend his hand into the cab of a red taxi and accept R20 from the
driver.
The modus operandi
we observed was for usually three police vans to arrive and park under the
shade of trees.
Roadblocks
lasted an average of about 20 minutes, during which time the officers would
target older-model cars.
They are
careful, said Gareth Newham, head of the governance, crime and justice division
at the Institute for Security Studies, because they fear a motorist or taxi
passenger recording them on a camera or cellphone.
In another
instance, which happened on November 15, The Star watched a driver hand over a
piece of paper that appeared to be money to a policeman. The policeman never
handed it back.
On two separate
occasions, we watched officers pull out wads of cash and count them just after
a roadblock was concluded.
The one
incident happened on November 8, after the roadblock, when two officers were
sitting in a Florida and a Diepsloot police station van. One of the officers
pulled out a pile of tens and twenties and stretched across to the other van
and handed over cash.
On November 15,
a police officer, again at the conclusion of a roadblock, took loose notes out
of his pocket, lent into a Roodepoort police station van and counted it.
As these
roadblocks were being conducted across the road, illegal miners were mining for
gold-bearing ore, which is a crime. No attempt was made to arrest these miners.
Metro police
spokesman Chief Superintendent Wayne Minnaar condemned the incident of the
metro police officer taking the R10 bribe.
“Instead of
giving a bribe, motorists should phone the hotline number which is on all metro
police vehicles,” he said.
The JMPD
anti-corruption hotline number is 0800 203 712.
Hard to rank
graft in police service
No one knows
how widespread bribery is among the South African police.
“It is so
hidden that it is difficult to find evidence on it,” said Gareth Newham, the
head of the governance, crime and justice division at the Institute for
Security Studies.
When Newham
asked station commanders how rife they thought corruption was at their police
stations, their estimates ranged from 5 percent to 60 percent.
“What we do
believe is that it is more prevalent in the lower ranks, and less with
(higher-ranking) officers as they are more focused and better paid,” said
Newham.
Where there has
been research into police corruption, it has examined the public’s perception
of it.
A Statistics
South Africa survey in 2012 revealed that 66 percentof South Africans thought
that people working in the police service were the most corrupt.
The figure for
Home Affairs officials was 38 percent.
Newham said the
best way to fight corruption within the SAPS would be the re-establishment of a
national anti-corruption unit, which was disbanded by former national
commissioner Jackie Selebi .
Last year, the
present national commissioner, General RiahPhiyega, said the SAPS planned to
relaunch an anti-corruption unit aimed at fighting fraud and corruption within
the police service.
shaun.smillie@inl.co.za
The Star
