Talk:South African Police Service

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Contents 1 assessment 1.1 SAP 1.2 SAPS 1.3 Law enforcement before 1948 1.4 Law enforcement during apartheid 1.5 Law enforcement after apartheid 2 Performance

[edit] assessment

Good content, but needs references and images for B class--SGGH 15:12, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

I must respectfully disagree that the content is good, please see below

There are several substantial problems with this article:

[edit] SAP

There should be a separate article on the South African Police during the apartheid years. Conflating SAP with SAPS either lessens the relevance of SAP, and/or creates the impression that they are contiguous entities which they cannot be given a) the perception in black South Africa of the SAP's illegitimacy and b) the integration of homeland law enforcement elements into the new SAPS

Several aspects are basically non-existent, especially:

• The vast atrocities committed during this period
• Structures like
  • BOSS
  • Vlakplaas and General Lothar Neethling
  • The Internal Stability Unit
• Mixed authority
  • The role of the SADF as an informal law enforcement authority
  • The collaboration between SAPS and the SADF in military and paramilitary operations
  • The Dept of Bantu Affairs as a law enforcement agency
• The different incarnations of Ministries exclusively or jointly responsible for law enforcement between 48 and 94

[edit] SAPS

This article seems to have replaced the article on the South African Police Service which really should be reinstated as a separate article because it is one level of abstraction lower than the subject of "law enforcement"

The SAPS component of the article is incomplete (a small example is very little reference to its sub-structures)

• The content of this article does not correspond with its title

The track record of SAPS against the Crime Prevention Strategy of ?1994 and the tendency towards increases crime in newly democratic states, for instance see law enforcement literature on the ex-Soviet states

[edit] Law enforcement before 1948

• The period from the British occupation of the Cape through to Union in 1910 is missing (e.g. ZARPs of the Transvaal)

[edit] Law enforcement during apartheid

• • Homeland police forces
  • The role of street committees in extra-governmental law enforcement
  • Law enforcement within guerilla structures (e.g. Quatro Camp)

[edit] Law enforcement after apartheid

Other components of law enforcement are not dealt with at all:

• Traffic authorities - not all of these are located in Metros, therefore
• Metro police forces
• Sheriffs offices
• the enforcement sections of environmental affairs and SA Revenue Services, the latter being distinct from
• the Customs Service
• the JCPS cluster as a governance structure of the entire system
• The Military Police who have restricted jurisdiction but fulfil a law enforcement role
• The Railway Police (at least from a historical perspective)
• the various bodies within the Dept of Justice (and the controversy this has caused) that have law enforcement powers, e.g.
  • Scorpions (NPA)
  • Asset Forfeiture Unit (NPA)
  • Special Investigation Unit
  • Witness Protection Unit (NPA)
• The recent move to Community Policing
• The role of and collaboration with private security companies

Suidafrikaan 14:21, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Performance

At a recent public gathering a religious leader prayed at the end that the phone at the local reaction unit would work for those of us who needed help from the police. This is of course because his parishioners has informed him that, in their experience, it usually doesn't work. Therefore, I believe it is necessary for us to say something about the performance of this Police force. I'd like to see their impact on crime or reaction time or some sort of measurement. Also, some recent reports in the media has left the impression that while crime is rising, reporting of crime to the police is down because of how badly this police service is performing. I believe this kind of information is as important as the divisions and types of helicopters they use.--Squiose (talk) 19:56, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

Would be good to have that kind if information, but I can't really see how one will get real, unbiased and fair statistics on that; trusting media reports is probably not a good idea, depending on what newspaper you read they are either excellent or really terrible. The truth is probably somewhere in between. The only time I directly required the Police in the last 10 years was last year to report a car accident. I visited the Midrand station directly after the accident (about 9:30PM) to ensure that I had a police witness that there was no alcohol involved and to submit my statement. The station was clean, staff was helpful and thorough and they took two callouts while I was there. Does that make them excellent? Probably not, can't build stats on small numbers of incidents. --NJR ZA (talk) 20:20, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

I found some links with info. We really should get the original documents, not just the reports about them, but I've no idea how to start. [1] Is a lengthy paper, that discusses a lot of why it's difficult to measure, but doesn't seem to give any real data or solutions. [2] is a disturbing read that indicates corruption is rive in the SAPS and there seems to be no stopping it. The disbanding of the anti corruption unit by Selebi is also mentioned. [3] is an interesting report that indicates crime reporting is being totally skewed by comparing extremes with each other, ie Washington DC with the most murders in the USA, is compared to Pretoria, with the least murders in South Africa. The biggest point it makes is that crime reports is a bad measure of law enforcement success, since it depends on the amount of crimes reported, not committed. Thus a low number of crime reports might as easily indicate successfully crime prevention as such bad policing that people no longer bother to report it. [4] is a newspaper report about The Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation’s (CSVR) 270-page report, In Service of the People’s Democracy: An Assessment of the South African Police Service. According to the mail and guardian then, the report states that there are some disturbing trends in policing, ie the consistent abuse of black foreigners in custody. And now the police are asked to stem the Xenophobia. Hmm. Lastly this [5] report about the Scorpion integration into the police has three paragraphs about police performance that seems helpful:

These developments come against a disturbing background. Late last year, justice director-general Menzi Simelane told MPs that of the more than 2-million cases reported to police last year, a little more than a million were enrolled for trial in the courts. Of that million, about 70% fell off the court roll without ever coming to trial.

While the success rate for the 300000 cases that do go to trial is up at about 80%, this is woeful when taken as a percentage of the whole. Reasons offered for the cases failing to go to trial vary from incomplete and botched investigations, lost dockets, and dockets simply disappearing -- all matters directly under the control of the police, not the prosecuting authority or the courts.

Also late last year, Deputy Justice Minister Johnny de Lange, in announcing progress made with the government's review of the criminal justice system, frankly admitted that parts of the system were dysfunctional. Part of this dysfunction results from the fact that many experienced detectives have left the SAPS in the past 10 years. The training of new detectives is also said to be not up to scratch. Those that are left, even the well-trained ones, have hundreds of case dockets on their desks at any one time. Thorough investigation to the point of a prosecutable case is extremely difficult.

So from my quick Google assisted research I make the conclusion that the SAPS has successfully transformed itself from an instrument of Apartheid, and then completely botched the job by becoming crooks and threatening to kill the honest cops if they should show them up. They then hide this by arguing about irrelevant statistics. Pretty bleak picture, but maybe I'm just negative? --Squiose (talk) 18:41, 6 June 2008 (UTC)