Police, metro cops merger criticised
THE DA-led City of Cape Town could soon lose control of its metro police service as the Civilian Secretariat for Police moves ahead with plans to merge the municipal policing service with the SAPS.
New laws aimed at absorbing the municipal police into SAPS structures are currently up for public scrutiny and comment.
The recently published 2015 draft White Paper on Safety and Security, advocates a single police service to enhance the functioning of the metro police, streamline command and control, and ensure uniform standards.
But the road map towards establishing a single police service has left policing experts uneasy and has the city and DA- led provincial government seeing red.
While most critics agreed that the White Paper’s support of the National Development Plan’s vision of a modernised, transformed and efficient criminal justice system is welcomed, the assertion that it is constitutionally undesirable that some municipalities have their own police services that engage in crime prevention, has raised many eyebrows.
The White Paper, among others, advocates that “maximising effective policing in South Africa over the medium term will be best supported through the establishment of a national single police service”.
The paper suggests that a regulatory framework must be established for conferring of limited investigative competencies for municipal police to conduct investigations for preparation to submit to court.
“This is to include particular categories such as traffic-related matters, municipal by-laws, as well as crimes committed on and related to municipal assets or the environment, such as theft and tender irregularities.”
The mayoral committee member for safety and security, JP Smith, said a single police service would not serve to improve policing, but would simply centralise control and disempower the metro police.
Smith said essentially, the White Paper admitted numerous problems and proposed a variety of changes that they welcomed.
Listing their key problems, Smith said, the document talked
about limiting the powers of metro police to traffic and by-law enforcement, which effectively precluded them from dealing with serious crime and would stop metro police from arresting drug dealers and gangsters. “This can only serve the drug dealers and gangsters and one must question why national government would suggest such a self-defeating change in MPD (Metropolitan Police Department) powers.”
Smith pointed out that the provision of the White Paper conflicted with the powers of local government as outlined in the constitution and is also in conflict with the labour legislation and the collective agreements with the unions. “We are getting legal opinion on this and will need to challenge these matters in court if our inputs are not taken into consideration.”
Smith wanted clarity on the role and powers of the proposed “Divisional Commissioner for Municipal and Traffic Police”, adding that the national government may be exceeding the limits of its powers.
“While a division within SAPSthat works with metro police and Traffic may lead to better communication and co-ordination, any attempt to subjugate MPD under the control by SAPS or to incorporate MPD into SAPS would be unconstitutional and would be met with legal action by the city and province,” he said. “Centralising the police will not lead to better training and co-ordination – in fact it would reduce the quality of training being enjoyed by MPD.”
Community Safety MEC, Dan Plato also raised the alarm, saying the seemingdisempowerment of the metro police needed unpacking, as diminishing the metro police to a traffic and by-law enforcement agency could have devastating effects on the metro police’s successful track record in assisting the combat of serious violent crimes, the drug trade and gangsterism in Cape Town.
“The problem of gangs and drugs in Cape Town and the Western Cape still exceeds the functional capability of the SAPS to stem the tide. It is a problem which needs the assistance of all agencies and the co-operation and support of communities as well,” Plato added.
Senior researcher in the governance, crime and justice division at the Institute for Security Studies, Dr Johan Burger, said he was concerned that the obvious reason for the move was to give expression to an ANC policy decision taken during the ANC’s 52nd National Conference held in Polokwane.
“The interpretation of the constitutional provisions is clearly flawed and the only question is if it is flawed because of some strange misinterpretation of the constitution or is it deliberate in order to give effect to the ANC policy decision?” he questioned. “It also raises some suspicion, as is often suggested, that the motivation for taking this policy position is because the ANC government wishes to have all police agencies under its control and, for example, finds it completely unacceptable that any of the police agencies can be controlled by a non-ANC government at any level.”
Burger said the biggest shortcoming in the argument was that it failed to explain how integration into a single agency would reduce problems of corruption, poor service delivery to communities, or assist in reducing crime.