How many police would be enough, one wonders

Living in a time of heightened crime levels, as we do, it is no surprise that our attention should turn to the police and how well, or not, they do their work. They are, after all, the agency charged with protecting us and our property, and maintaining social order.

Living with crime has become a terrifying experience for all South Africans, irrespective of social standing. This week police minister Bheki Cele revealed that between April and June the number of murders had increased to 6,424 — 664 more than in the same period last year.

In those three months, as many as 9,516 rape cases were reported to the police. The fact that this is nearly 500 fewer than last year will be cold comfort to the victims, with the recent rape outrage in Krugersdorp underlining that all women and girls in our country are at serious risk.

Among crimes that have gone up are attempted murder, car hijacking, cash-in-transit heists and robbery at residential premises.

With the range of crimes suggesting that none of us is safe from the now-endemic criminality, it falls, as it should, to Cele to provide the answers.

At every opportunity he has complained about not having enough police. There are today, he says, 20,000 fewer police members than there were 10 years ago, translating to a ratio of one police member to every 450 citizens. He is probably right to argue for a better statistic here. The service has to be adequately resourced, not only materially but with personnel.

Still, Cele’s cry prompts the question: how many police would be enough? And once we reach that coveted number, whatever it is, will our crime crisis be resolved? 

I’m not convinced of an exclusive correlation between the police staffing complement and crime levels; that the more police we have the less crime we will see.

Nor am I a fan of Cele’s firefighting management style, which entails him hopping from one major crime scene to the next, like a man with ants in his pants. It does, no doubt, do wonders for his public visibility. What it does not do is yield much by way of results. (But that’s a subject for another day).

I believe that by simply focusing on incarcerating criminals (crucial as that is), we are dealing more with the symptoms than the cause. We should also be concerned about the criminal mindset of too many of us, even as we piously designate ourselves upright citizens.

What happens when the scales are progressively tipped in favour of lawlessness, as more of us engage in lawbreaking activities of various gravity? 

I’m persuaded that the concept of policing and public order maintenance is premised on the majority of the population voluntarily abiding by the laws, with or without the police present. Like knowing to pay for goods before leaving the store, or not scooting off without settling the bill for your tank of petrol at the garage. And desisting from littering or peeing in public.

The task of arresting and punishing wrongdoers would then be reserved for what is an aberrant minority. But what happens when the scales are progressively tipped in favour of lawlessness, as more of us engage in lawbreaking activities of various gravity? 

On the road, it used to be that taxi drivers enjoyed the exclusive notoriety of disobeying the rules, like stopping at the red light and following the basic, sensible convention of keeping left and passing right. Not any more. There are more of us behaving badly, including the well-heeled in shiny, expensive cars. Even those who are rich enough to live in high-end residential estates have been found, like their shackland counterparts, to illegally connect to the power grid to avoid paying for what they use.

Were we as a society to rely only on the police to ensure compliance with the law, we’d clearly need to have a police officer for every adult citizen — which would be an economic and practical impossibility.

Many of our crimes are a reflection of the growing criminal mindset; a culture of sticking to rules only when the police are in the vicinity. Therefore, an anti-crime strategy of simply throwing criminals in jail, if we can convict them, will not stem the pipeline of offenders, for whom we will never have enough court time and prisons anyway.

For the avoidance of doubt, this is not to excuse the litany of well-known failings of the police, including their chequered track record when it comes to detecting crime and putting together decent cases for successful prosecution.

The point is, while the police can act against visible acts of illegality, they cannot regulate what’s on our minds, which is the genesis of our behaviour. 

And so, as we seek to put Cele’s feet to the fire, we should explore ways to change the national disposition to act criminally, which can include vandalising public property because we happen to be dissatisfied about something, or dodging paying our dues to the state. 

Much of this culture is a carry-over from the days, decades ago, when it was considered revolutionary or patriotic to render the country — under the apartheid system — ungovernable. Some of it arises from a faux human rights bent, where some use the corruption in the state and elsewhere, as justification for violating the law. 

In either instance, the thinking has to change to acknowledge that we now live in a democracy, however imperfect. And that we cannot pick and choose which laws to obey and which not.

In the absence of that, our expectation for the police to single-handedly win the war against criminality will prove to be an unrealistic one — for the fedora-clad one or anyone else.