Durban — Police and Prisons Civil Rights Union (Popcru) has called for legislation that would ensure that those who kill police officers face the full might of the law.
The union revealed that about 70 officers had been killed since the beginning of the year, leading to their colleagues fearing for their lives instead of focusing on crime fighting.
Popcru spokesperson Richard Mamabolo said the union approached Parliament seeking policies that would result in harsher action against police killers.
“We are also looking at influencing the changing of the legislation to make sure that police killers become prisoners. We are currently engaging with the government and hopefully there will be such legislation,” said Mamabolo.
He said the reasons why police were killed were varied, but included robbing them of firearms and sabotaging investigations.
Officers who were recently killed in KwaZulu-Natal, which is currently rated as a danger zone for police, included Sergeant Riyadh Adams, Warrant Officer Sthembiso Mazibuko and Constable Thabani Gwala.
Adams was shot dead when he responded to a robbery at a jewellery store at the Pavilion Shopping Mall in Durban last Sunday while Mazibuko was killed in a shootout with suspects in Ntuzuma, north of Durban, on October 17. Gwala was returning from work when he was shot dead following what was believed to be a road rage incident on November 13 in Pietermaritzburg.
Delivering the latest quarterly crime statistics last week, Police Minister Bheki Cele said 35 on and off duty officers were killed between July and September. He said criminals did not spare the lives of officers from private security companies who also played a pivotal role in the fight against crime.
The union held a lunchtime picket at the Pietermaritzburg Magistrate’s Court on Tuesday, urging the justice system to ensure those found guilty of killing police officers “rot in jail”.
The union described the situation facing the men and women in blue as abnormal, scary and impacting negatively on their obligation to protect citizens.
Mamabolo said countrywide, but especially in KZN, police officers were under threat.
He said there was no certainty that when officers left for work they would return to their families.
Mamabolo said the union had held meetings with police management to find long- and short-term solutions to attacks on police officers. The union wants the police to be deployed and work in larger groups in order to be effective in covering each other’s backs. However, working in larger groups might not be possible because, according to Mamabolo, the country had a limited number of officers. He said there were about 107 000 officers and 30% of them were office-based.
In January, Western Cape Police Oversight and Community Safety MEC Reagen Allen said in a press statement that the country was short of 90 000 police officers who should be on the ground.
Three years ago, the South African Policing Union called on President Cyril Ramaphosa to declare police killings a national disaster, saying the crime had reached alarming levels.
Then Police Portfolio Committee chairperson Francois Beukman described the killings of police officers as a direct attack on the rule of law.
Current committee chairperson Nocks Seabi last week also expressed concern about the situation and called for “improved strategies to bring an end to police killings”.
“The committee will schedule a session where it intends to engage further on these crime statistics and broaden engagement to include provincial and station-level management of hotspot areas,” Seabi said in a statement.
Sunday Tribune