Police have ‘a pattern of criminality’,
research shows
28 January 2015 13:33
South African cops are
planning and executing serious and violent crimes, new research suggests.
The South African Institute
of Race Relations, working with AfriForum, today released a report called
Broken Blue Line 2. The police have moved swiftly to distance themselves from
the report.
Among Broken Blue Line 2’s
key findings are:
» Allegations of police
officers being involved in committing serious and violent crime are not just
isolated incidents;
» Police criminality
doesn’t simply relate to corruption – researchers say there is a “pattern” of
organisation;
» In many cases involving
perpertrators wearing police uniform, the criminals are not just posing as cops
– they are the real thing and are sometimes on duty when committing crimes;
and,
» The low conviction rate
of implicated officers suggests that police management doesn’t really take the
problem seriously.
Frans Cronje, the chief
executive of the Institute of Race Relations, said the Independent Police
Investigative Directorate, the police’s watchdog, simply couldn’t deal with the
scale of the problem.
“A new proactive
investigative agency must be established within the department of justice to
actively infiltrate and root out criminal officers,” Cronje said. He said that
a 2013 police parliamentary submission revealed that one in 100 police officers
were convicted criminals.
Police spokesperson
Lieutenant General Solomon Makgale said that national commissioner General Riah
Phiyega had met with Cronje and Ian Cameron of AfriForum, which funded the report,
on Friday.
“Phiyega requested the
meeting in order to gain insight into the contents of the report,” Makgale
said.
He said the report’s
methodology was “fundamentally flawed” and that the police were not approached
during the research process.
