Cops are the
criminals, says SA Institute of Race Relations
Sapa | 28 January, 2015 12:15
Members of the SA Police Service play a major role in
perpetrating serious violent crime, the SA Institute of Race Relations (SAIRR)
said.
"There
are simply too many reports and too many allegations to reach any other
conclusion," SAIRR chief executive Frans Cronje said in Pretoria.
He
was releasing a report, titled "Broken Blue Line 2", a follow-up on
the initial project released in 2011.
"Police
officers will often use their policing powers, as well as official equipment,
to perpetrate crimes. In the case of cloned officers, criminal gangs appear to
benefit from internal support from real officers," said Cronje.
"It
is with good reason that members of the public often do not trust the police
and that some are even afraid of the police. South Africans can no longer be
sure that when reporting a crime they are not reporting to a criminal in
uniform."
"Broken
Blue Line 2" covers incidents recorded from April 2011 to January 2015.
Regarding
the methodology, Cronje said SAIRR analysts identified 100 cases of alleged
police involvement in serious and violent crimes.
"These
100 cases studies were written up and then analysed in order to look for trends
or patterns of behaviour," he said.
"We
then tested those results against two sources of information on disciplinary
action against police officers implicated in criminality."
According
to the report the 100 cases were just the "tip of the iceberg".
The
2011 study found that police involvement in serious and violent crime was not
limited to "isolated incidents", but was part of a general pattern of
behaviour across the country.
