Crime and Punishment
"You have thousands of people coming in, so the standard for recruitment dropped. Training dropped from two years to one. You can't do proper vetting."
Gareth Newham, analyst, Institute for Security Studies, expert on South Africa policing
"I want no warning shots. You have one shot and it must be a kill shot. If you miss, the criminals will go for the kill. They don't miss. We can't take this chance."
Susan Shabangu, deputy police commissioner, South Africa
During apartheid, police were white. And their cruelty and brutality were well known and equally well feared. That was then. Now police officers are mostly black. They are still feared. They are notoriously brutal. Reforming of the country's police was a top priority after apartheid when the African National Congress was voted into office.
Police in the new South Africa were meant to serve the people, not brutally control them. But despite these measures, crime soared in the country. Murder, carjackings, armed robberies were endemic and government enacted tough new police policies to crack down on crime. And huge recruitment drives brought 70,000 new officers and administrators into the picture.
The numbers defied attempts to adequately train them all. And crime figures just kept climbing. One of its top detectives in charge of the Oscar Pistorius case had to be removed once it was revealed he faces seven charges of attempted murder in the firing on a minivan in a much earlier incident, not yet resolved.
During the platinum mine protests last summer police opened fire on the protesters and killed 34 people in the largest mass shooting since apartheid ended, bringing no glory either to the police in public opinion, or the government that purportedly controlled them, in the final analysis. The number of people killed by police has escalated.
After all they were given carte blanche to shoot to kill. By none other than the deputy police minister who has urged police to use maximum force. At an anti-crime rally in Pretoria in 2008, she told them "they have permission to kill these criminals". And though her remarks raised alarm, they were also praised by those who wanted a tougher reaction to violent crime.
And so the police got tough with a taxi driver. A slight Mozambican man whom they claim had tied up traffic. They bound his hands to the rear of a police van, and then sped off, dragging the man along the pavement. A crowd of onlookers was aghast and shouted at the police to stop. They warned the police that they were taking videos. The police were unfazed.
"The visuals of the incident are horrific, disturbing and unacceptable. No human being should be treated in that manner", South African President Jacob Zuma stated obligingly. Mido Macia, 27, was found dead in a Daveyton police cell; his own fault, the police said, since he assaulted a constable before he was overpowered - a police investigative unit claimed.
"We come across a lot of cases of police brutality. The police don't even care that people are watching", said Moses Diamini of the Independent Investigative Directorate which investigates police crimes.
Here's one they need to investigate over the police's own investigative unit.
Labels: Crime, Culture, Human Relations, Security, Societal Failures, South Africa
posted by Pieface @ Saturday, March 02, 2013
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