Senior cop gets chop for sexual advances

CHILLING confessions of sexual harassment and misconduct in the Silverton, Tshwane, ballistic division of the SAPS have emerged after the dismissal of a senior commander found guilty of the offences.

The commander was fired after coming clean on sexually harassing an administrative clerk and other female employees for the past two years.

SAPS spokesman LieutenantGeneral Solomon Makgale said that after the “jaw-dropping” confessions at the internal investigation, the commander was dismissed.

“Sordid and other details of how the officer touched subordinates and initiated sexually charged conversations with the affected employees emerged. It was on the basis of this information that, during the hearing on October 23 to 24, the commander pleaded guilty to his improper, disgraceful and unacceptable behaviour,” Makgale said.

The commander, who cannot be named, admitted that it was not just the clerk he had sexually harassed but several other employees within the unit, some of them married.

He confessed that, for over two years, he sexually harassed “more than one” female employee in the working environment, where he was required to lead by example.

The married father-of-five agreed that between 2012 and 2014, while on duty at the department, he conducted himself in an improper, disgraceful and unacceptable manner by fondling and touching female employees’ breasts.

He promised his behaviour could be corrected if he were given a second chance. But the disciplinary committee dismissed this show of remorse, saying his disgraceful and unacceptable conduct fell within the definition of sexual harassment, which the SAPS viewed in a very serious light.