‘Cops turn away victims of GBV’

SOS: NATIONAL SHELTER HELPLINE GETS REPORTS

Many stations don’t have family violence, child protection and sexual offences units.

Police are still turning away and failing victims of domestic and gender-based violence, despite positive strides made in policy development for policing.

So said the National Shelter Movement (NSM) of South Africa on Wednesday as organisations marked National Police Day.

Since taking its first call nearly two months ago, the movement’s National Shelter Helpline said it had numerous reports regarding issues of poor service delivery from the SA Police Service (Saps).

According to NSM project coordinator Mariam Mangera, the problems were largely the result of what appeared to be police officers passing the buck, rather than effectively dealing with GBV cases brought to their attention.

“The police have to follow certain protocols when cases of GBV are reported to them.

“Some police stations are equipped with a family violence, child protection and sexual offences [FCS] unit, with trained forensic social workers responding to these cases, which helps facilitate cases better.”

With many police stations currently without a FCS unit, police officers reluctant to take on GBV cases were apparently using this as an excuse to turn victims away.

This was against national instructions on how officers should respond to GBV.

The Saps is in contravention of the Domestic Violence Act, according to gender equity activist, Mo Senne, who started a campaign to rectify this, #Trainthemall. The campaign is aimed at pressuring government to give all members of Saps adequate training on GBV, a requisite which had only partially been met.

Wednesday marked South Africa’s 16th National Police Day, a day set aside for the Saps to remember the sacrifices made by police officers towards the safety of civilians.

“Members of the police service also face a lot of challenges, They don’t get adequate psychosocial services when they [go] through traumatic and dangerous situations every day. There are simply not enough officers for our population,” said Senne.

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