Recruitment drives coupled with weak or non-existent background checks are giving criminals an easy passage into SAPS.
|||Durban - Massive recruitment drives coupled with weak or non-existent background checks are giving criminals an easy passage into the ranks of the SAPS.
This is according to opposition parties and a security researcher who have criticised police management for allowing a situation that could endanger the public.
The police have confirmed they have 1 448 members with criminal records, and that while some of the reasons for this had been known for some time, management had not acted on them.
However the SAPS has yet to reveal how many are still on duty and give a provincial breakdown.
Police Minister Nathi Mthethwa announced on Sunday the report of a two-year-long staff audit had been completed, and the national police commissioner, General Riah Phiyega, had been given until the end of October to act on the outcomes.
The DA’s spokeswoman on policing matters, Dianne Kohler Barnard, on Wednesday blamed the police recruitment process for allowing criminals into the police service.
“SAPS members with criminal records should be dismissed with immediate effect,” she told the Daily News.
“To determine if someone has a criminal record all they have to do is type in their identity numbers into their system.
“Their recruitment process has collapsed and their massive drive to increase the numbers in the police force has also resulted in proper checks not being conducted,” Kohler Barnard added.
Gareth Newham, head of the Governance, Crime and Justice Division at the Institute for Security Studies, said the police had about 67 000 new recruits every year.
“That’s part of the problem when you have massive recruitment campaigns to get people coming in to increase the number of police officers and you have thousands of applications to vet and you can’t do so accurately,” said Newham, who was part of an SAfm panel yesterday discussing the issue.
“In some cases vetting doesn’t take place properly, so some people with criminal records slip into the system.”
National police spokesman Lieutenant-General Solomon Makgale, who was also on the talk show panel, said most of the 1 448 SAPS members with records for serious offences had committed them before they were in service.
“Most of these officers were convicted while in the police service. We are dealing with police officers who have committed crimes in the 1980s and 1990s. We’re not talking about recent criminal offences because those are dealt with as and when they happen,” he said.
Makgale admitted that there were some corrupt employees who manipulated the system and allowed applicants with criminal convictions into the police service. “In the end though, the system is working because we find these members and deal with them,” he said.
“The challenge we have is that some of these issues were known to police management and no action was taken and that’s why the police minister instructed that we also need to look at our disciplinary code and say what are the things we need to change so that correct decisions can be made in the correct manner.”
Makgale said that in the 12-month period up to the end of March, just over 1 000 police officers were fired for various offences as well as misconduct.
Kohler Barnard said there were still more than 5 000 cases being investigated by the Independent Police Investigative Directorate (Ipid) in any given year.
“The concern is that those who have committed serious and heinous crimes are still employed,” she said. “It is embarrassing to this country that such an audit had to be taken.”
Asked how many criminal cases were investigated against police officers in the past year and how many had resulted in convictions, Ipid spokesman Moses Dlamini said the statistics would be released when the directorate tabled its annual report in Parliament before the end of September.
Daily News
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