Police deaths are the symptom of a broken SAPS in need of repair

The following speech was delivered by the DA Shadow Minister of Police, Dianne Kohler Barnard MP, in Parliament in response to the Police Minister’s statement on police murders. 

The Minister of Police tried time and again over the past two days to cancel this debate to honour South Africa’s murdered Police Officers. Thankfully he, as do most ANC Ministers, failed in his efforts.

I didn’t know any of these 61 police officers.  And I didn’t know their families or their children or their Mothers or their Fathers. But I do know the families of people who have been murdered all over the country, and I know the devastation such a horror wreaks.

Think of these people who kissed them goodbye every morning, and prayed that they would come home safe, but worried endlessly that they wouldn’t.

Think, too, of their colleagues who returned to an office with an empty desk, of the loss of a friend who may have saved their lives on duty, with whom they shared their successes and their fears.

Think, too, of their community, with members quietly pleased that a police officer lived nearby, as though that would somehow steer the criminals that run like cockroaches through every street in our land, away from their homes.

I do know that the officers we commemorate today who were on duty were doing it for all of us – to protect and defend us.  

These were people with brave hearts and such a generosity of spirit that they would give their lives for you or for me.

I do know that the majority of them were off duty but we all know that being a police officer was not a job for them, it is what they were.  Police wear their uniform on the inside as well as on the outside, and they belong to a family in blue.

It is a tough job, and today our officers are paying with their lives. 

Of course crime affects all of us. It takes away the people we love the most. It leaves us scared, and angry. It brings out the worst in our society.

It does this in communities around the country; and it equally affects those brave police officers who work tirelessly - in the most difficult of circumstances – to fight it. 

What our citizens don’t understand is that the overwhelming majority of our police are fine, upstanding, honest, fair men and women.

And why is that? Why is it that today it is so difficult for South Africans to join with us, here in the National Assembly, and with their families, to feel the empathy we are renowned for? 

Perhaps it’s because a third of our civilians are scared of the Police. They run away from them, not to them if there is trouble.  If they are stopped at a road block they expect to be robbed; if they are pulled aside they expect to be manhandled, arrested on non-existent charges, thrown in a van, taken on a terrifying joy ride, thrown in a filthy cell and released without charge the next day.  They expect to be raped.

Today nearly half of South Africans feel there is no point in reporting crime. Because they do not trust our Police.  It is truly a Broken Blue Line.

It’s been broken by cadre deployment.

The Richard Mdluli-era Crime Intelligence that has left our nations crime intelligence apparatus broken and ineffectual in early detection of explosions of Xenophobic violence and are unable to crack crime syndicates like the one that has been waged by criminals against the police officers who everyday risk their lives on the streets of South Africa without the proper intelligence they need to protect themselves and ordinary citizens alike.

These days when the Department of Police annually releases its heavily massaged, outdated crime statistics, they carry no moral authority whatsoever. They are only of use to analysts, not to civilians who need to protect themselves, indeed after years of bungled figures, such is the distrust of these statistics that respected analysts look elsewhere for results. The process will be repeated in about two weeks, when once again the horrors of crime in our country will be spread across the front pages as cities and towns vie for the dubious titles of Murder Capital, Rape Capital and Fraudsters Capital of South Africa.

As dodgy as these figures have become, the public perception of police is coloured, nonetheless, by them, and by the actions of the various revolving-door Police Ministers and National Police Commissioners – the latest one of whom has inevitably gone down the road followed by the previous two, and the country still waits for her to be disciplined for her gross negligence when not respecting the confidence of the Hawks in defeating the ends of justice by tipping off the Western Cape Police Commissioner about an ongoing investigation against him.

The disgust we all felt when we saw her laughing as the families of these murdered officers wept at the Police Day commemoration, was as strong as that we felt when she laughed while the film footage of the Marikana Massacre was shown at the Farlam Commission.  

These are just some of the reasons that tilt the attitude and perception scales in terms of trust in our Police. Add to that daily reports of police criminality, against the very citizens we are hoping today feel empathy with the families of the police officers who have been murdered, and we have an almost unbreachable disconnect.

South Africans are by nature a caring nation, we feel deeply, yet the militarisation of our police, where they use Apartheid-era Defence Force titles as though the citizenry are the enemy to be hunted down and killed; daily headlines of police members who rob, rape and torture – has them asking themselves how and why they can and should cry for yet another dead police officer.

Well - being a police officer in South Africa is one of the most dangerous jobs in the world.  In Canada three police officers are killed each year. A police officer here is five times more likely to be killed on-duty than is their counterpart in the United States.

In SA the count stayed above 200 per annum until fairly recently.  Thankfully the annual total has dropped but is now on the increase again with, as of yesterday another two murdered, so 61 of our officers have been killed thus far this year with nearly four months to go.

We have to ask ourselves: Why?

Our murder rate dropped after 2003 from 48 per day down over the years to an all-time low of 42 in 2012 when 15 609 of us were murdered.  Today, however, it has risen again up to 47 a day – so basically we are back to where we were at the launch of democracy. 

What is difficult to understand is that our officers are more likely to be killed while off-duty, than while on-duty.  That was true in 2003 and it is true today.  Has the Minister instructed the Civilian Secretariat to drop everything, do the research and determine why this is?

Has the Minister ploughed the necessary funds from his R73 billion budget to fix a broken Crime Intelligence Unit destroyed by Richard Mdluli? Mdluli has raked in almost R4 million since being suspended and is doing nothing. That is where the money is going while police officer and citizen alike are seized by lethal crime.

Does the SAPS know what to do about it?  With a R73 billion budget the SAPS should be ashamed to admit that no, it hasn’t and to admit that they are clueless.

Are these officers targeted because they are police out of uniform; or because they try to tackle crime while off duty; or are they mainly inexperienced and barely trained Constables? Are they targeted for their firearms? Why are our experienced officers being executed – is it tied in with the gangs and their rituals?

Calls are being made – the most recent by the President - for officers to fight back.  I assure you there is no one in this Chamber who should believe that a police officer will stand with his or her hands at their side and wait to be shot and killed.  It is a ridiculous and insulting call to make.  The law is clear: where a suspect is armed with a firearm and threatening the life of the SAPS member or a third party, then the officer may use his or her own firearm. 

Members of the SAPS may not be drawing their weapons in time, which speaks to training and still today some members do not understand the basics of officer safety.  

Every effort must be made to bring these deaths down. 

Yes they are targets, in and out of uniform, yes they sometimes carry a firearm never fired from the time they graduated from the Training Academy, yes training has failed them as refresher courses may only be done with two or three members per station each year. 

The sad reality is that up to 40 000 operational members have failed or do not have firearm competency certificates. When it hit 20 000 it was in a leaked report from horrified SAPS members; then it hit 30 000 and we were given nothing but excuses; and now it’s 40 000 and I’ve no doubt the same crew who massaged the We Support Phiyega press releases are working on excuses for that failure, too.

How many of these murdered officers had recent firearm training?  

How many had recent refresher courses in safety tactics? 

How many of these deaths must we lay at the feet of an inefficient Department of Police?

Most police services globally require operational members to requalify in firearm competency twice a year. Here it is becoming the norm for armed officers not to have a competency certificate – which means there are police breaking the law.

How many of them are proficient in hand-to-hand combat – utilisation of non-lethal means?  Why do they not carry batons as is the international norm?  Does this not lead them to escalate from verbal warning to shooting with no pause in between?

Why do they work 12-hour shifts – but are supposed to be 100% vigilant – not possible.  

We owe it to the hard-working police officers, who risk their lives so that we may be safe, to make sure they are well-resourced, and properly trained. No police officer should be left vulnerable to attack because of a failure of management to take these issues seriously.

There is no single reason our officers are being shot and killed. There is no single reason they are killing their families and themselves.  But it is the fault of the Department of Police that in 21 years nothing has been done to protect our police. The DA proposes that our members are trained for every eventuality in terms of international best-practice. 

To do that would be the best tribute we can pay to those brave men and women who have lost their lives in the line of duty and while off duty.

Every possible resource must be utilised to stop these killings.  Because Police Lives Matter.

Issued by Dianne Kohler Barnard, DA Shadow Minister of Police, 10 September 2015