The South African Police
Service is rife with hardened criminals, murderers, rapists and hijackers.
This is according to the SA Institute of Race Relations new report, The
wolf guards the sheep, which was released yesterday.
In the report researchers warn that the situation of police criminality
is so severe that women driving alone at night have reason to fear seeing blue
lights in their rear-view mirrors.
The report, which sampled 100 cases, showed 32% of the cases reviewed
related to murder, 26% to rape, 22% to armed robberies, and 20% to other crimes
including torture, theft and burglaries.
Police spokesman Lieutenant-General Solomon Makgale lambasted the report
as lies. He said the SAPS was never consulted.
Speaking at yesterday's launch Frans Cronje, the institute's chief
executive, said: "These are not 'isolated incidents', but a 'pattern of
behaviour'."
The report drew on data from the Independent Police Investigative
Directorate, parliament's portfolio committee on police and the parliamentary
monitoring group.
"We consulted ... before randomly selecting 100 cases from the
thousands we came across. We tried to get police involvement, starting [from]
last year, but they never responded."
Citing 2013 Parliament Monitoring Group data, Cronje said 1448 police
had criminal records. "Of this 54 are convicted murderers, 37 are rapists,
while 116 were convicted for attempted murder, 33 for attempted rape, 917 for
assault and 291 for other offences."
Cronje said "results show in the 2013-2014 year [that] 1300 members
were dismissed. But, the number of cases are increasing so significantly that
it's a drop in the ocean."
Cronje said their most powerful evidence was from the Parliamentary
Monitoring Group.
The evidence showed that one out of every 100 police members have a
criminal record. "That's over 1 400 serving police officers."
Makgale said it was no secret that there are criminals in the police who
"we arrest, but this document is not supported by facts. It's absolute
lies".
