Have the police in KwaZulu-Natal gone rogue, or are they carrying out orders?
One needs to look at this in context.
Police say the context is criminals open fire with AK-47s and they have no choice but to retaliate in kind?
The police do operate in that kind of environment in other parts of the country, but clearly the police in KwaZulu-Natal are killing more people than in any other province.
So have they gone rogue, or are they carrying out orders?
Excessive use of force by police happens due to a police culture, and that culture can happen either due to a history or due to what senior management and leadership encourage, permit or turn a blind eye to.
Is this what’s happening in KwaZulu-Natal?
From a policing point of view, it happens at [the] national level, so it’s the national police commissioner who will provide instructions. But, of course, provincial police commissioners have some discretion around how crime is tackled. You see less killings happening if senior management in the province are holding police to account and undertaking investigations, and taking the necessary disciplinary action against police members who perpetrate violence. It’s about impunity. So the question is about oversight and accountability, holding members to account.
Would better intelligence and planning minimise the life-threatening situations police blame for killing so many suspects?
Intelligence is a key proponent because you’d obviously then want to try and apprehend the suspects before a shootout. Obviously, knowing what sort of weapons they have, and where they live and operate, would inform your tactical response. But I think a lot of the violence stems from frustration within the police; that you do the police work, people get arrested and then the wheels of justice turn very, very slowly.
They find it easier to kill suspects than collect evidence against them and take them to court?
This is a global problem, particularly when you’ve got weak oversight mechanisms. Not only Ipid (Independent Police Investigative Directorate) but also parliament, which is not necessarily demonstrating a high degree of oversight, holding the police to account, calling them forward and asking them to account for why there are such high levels of violence.
They say they’re allowed to protect themselves.
The question is, was it necessary or was it justified for police to use lethal violence in those circumstances. A worrying case from a police culture point of view, particularly in KwaZulu-Natal, is that when the police encounter a movement of individuals they say they view as a threat to them, in many instances the entire group gets killed by the police. It’s not just some of them and then some of them surrender and some of them are arrested.
Is the killing of suspects an indictment of our prosecutorial system?
Yes and no. We know that conviction rates for many violent crime categories are low. Police are frustrated because violent criminals they arrest go back on the street. But the problem is often the policing itself. The cases are not referred to court by the NPA because the quality of the docket is not good enough to secure a conviction.
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