DEBATE AND REVIEW THE SHOOT-TO-KILL POLICY BY ANTI-POACHING UNIT

We can’t run a country with a shoot to kill policy. Our law enforcement agencies should use force which is proportionate, legal, accountable and necessary to avert any danger.

That’s why o kgona go bona mapodise a hula hela just because motho o ne a sia, unarmed and not even posing any immediate threat mme a hulwe. Is that reasonable and proportionate, legal and accountable? We are not saying they should not use force, let that force be accountable, proportionate and legal. Shooting people or suspects is a long term deterrent measure to any any crime; shooting should only be done where our officers are faced with danger and the only option has to be the use of force. But once such an incident has occurred, an independent commission should then investigate to make sure the right procedures and correct force were used. The inquiry should be impartial, transparent and accountable to both sides including the families of those who lost their loved ones. Inquiries are not meant to catch the officers only, they’re also meant to justify their actions, or help them to review and modify their training to make sure they don’t repeat the same mistakes. Also it helps to improve public confidence through accountability.

Before someone is shot, there are steps which are taken and you have to do that threat assessment. Before you get excited about pulling the trigger, you should have assessed the threats and have a reasonable belief that your life or that of your colleagues or someone within the vicinity was under immediate danger and that threat has to be explained afterwards. You should be able to explain your thinking processes under the threat assessment and why you acted that way. Being armed and wearing uniform does not give any right or whatsoever to kill anyone. You have the law and legal guidelines that guide you.

Some things may happen spontaneously in front of you and you have to act in a straight way while some may be based on intelligence and information received during briefing and before going out on patrol. All these are taken into consideration and have to be under the legal frames. Even where you are acting under command, those who gave you such command should follow the same processes I have outlined above. As law enforcement agencies, the final decision comes to you because information and intelligence can change as you approach someone. You may be told that people were poachers and carrying what looks like guns/firearms only to realise that they are just fishermen. So this threat assessment and thinking processes will allow you to take necessary steps. Your boss may be sitting 20km away from you and can’t see what you see, it is up to you to relay the information to him and make the right decision on the spot. It is not fixed that if you were told to do something then you just do it.

You see the issue of Kalafatisi proves how things can go wrong because our law enforcement officers failed to apply the process of threat assessment and take necessary steps. All they had was to shoot him. We should have used his case to review our strategies and develop a better model our officers can use in similar circumstances. The guy wa Kanye was shot and killed by law enforcement agencies mo Gabz after coming back from SA, no inquiries were made to review if our strategies were the right ones before he was shot because our law enforcement officers are programmed to know that once someone is said to be armed, their cause of action is to shoot him because they don’t account to anyone after that.

There are various tactics which can be deployed and shooting should be the very last one unless under extreme circumstances based on threat assessment. We can try making people to surrender and hand themselves so that we can safely arrest them, interview and interrogate them to gain more information and intelligence from them. This intelligence is worth more than killing them because we can use it to improve our security strategies and measures. We even use this intel for breaking the criminal networks and syndicates but killing them is like killing all that valuable information or even killing the wrong people due to wrong information and intelligence that you received. So I’m totally against the shoot to kill policy and it has to be debated at national level and understand its logic.