Rapist cops get off with written warnings
Neither watchdog nor cops can explain why charges weren’t laid
Police officers found guilty of rape by the police watchdog Ipid are being let off in some cases with written warnings and suspended salaries, prompting concern from policing experts who warned this week that accountability in the police force had reached a new low.
The Independent Police Investigative Directorate’s latest annual report reveals that two officers found guilty of rape by the directorate were given written warnings, while a third had his salary suspended.
But neither the directorate nor SAPS can give any justification for what appear to be shockingly lenient sanctions.
A criminal conviction of rape carries a minimum 10-year prison term. While Ipid found the officers guilty of rape, it did not refer the cases for criminal prosecution. Instead they were referred back to the SAPS for internal disciplinary hearings, where the sanctions were determined.
The two officers who received written warnings were stationed at the Kuils River police station in the Western Cape and the Mount Road police station in Gqeberha. The officer whose salary was suspended was at the Oudtshoorn police station. Further details were not included in the report.
In Ipid’s previous annual report, for 2020/21, three officers from Acornhoek in Mpumalanga were given verbal warnings after an Ipid investigation found them guilty of raping a person in custody.
Police in all these areas referred the Sunday Times back to Ipid for comment.
“Accountability, insofar as it ever existed in the police service, has been reduced to a merely theoretical concept,” said independent policing and security analyst Ziyanda Stuurman, who is the author of Can We Be Safe? The Future of Policing in SA.
Stuurman said while Ipid registers thousand of complaints of unlawful behaviour by officers every year, it has a dismally low record of successful convictions or dismissals.
The 2021/22 Ipid annual report details 99 complaints of rape against police officials. While some were withdrawn or rolled over to the next year for a decision, 64 were referred to the NPA for criminal prosecution and 14 were referred back to the police for disciplinary action.
Of these, 11 officers went through internal hearings that ended in a recommendation that they be dismissed. Two received written warnings and another had his salary suspended for an undisclosed period.
Crime and policing expert Johan Burger said there was no way to justify the lenient sentences.
“The fact is rape is rape — there is no way to change this in the eyes of the law. However, if there is a lack of evidence or a change in the criteria involved, then this needs to be explained by Ipid. To ask how a person guilty of rape gets only a warning is to ask for an explanation of something that sounds completely outrageous and unacceptable,” he said.
Ipid spokesperson Lizzy Suping said they could not give any details on the controversial cases. “We only inform or give feedback to the victim or representatives on any development in the case.”
She said that after investigating a complaint, Ipid would make a recommendation on whether it should be criminally prosecuted, withdrawn or dealt with internally by SAPS. The outcome of the ensuing action, she said, was left to SAPS or the courts.
“SAPS only lets us know the outcome or the sanction on each case,” Suping said. However, she could not say why the officers involved in the four controversial cases had not been referred for prosecution, despite the directorate finding them guilty of rape.
Ipid falls under the department of police. National spokesperson Col Athlenda Mathe did not respond to repeated requests for clarity and comment.
Lirandzu Themba, spokesperson for police minister Bheki Cele, said: “We believe as the Ipid is an independent body, those decisions should be answered by the directorate.”
The Police Accountability Tracker developed by investigative start-up Viewfinder contains an interface to the Ipid database of all the audited cases registered against the police between April 2012 and March 2020. It shows that in this period there were 964 complaints of rape laid against police officers, of which just 38 resulted in criminal convictions (29 were jailed) and 50 in dismissals.
“The system is set up to look like there is accountability, but when you go deeper into the figures you can see there is systemic failure and it’s clear that this is an area of faux accountability,” said Viewfinder’s Daneel Kotze, who has been investigating Ipid figures for the past few years.
Gareth Newham, head of justice and violence prevention at the Institute for Security Studies, said last year a study had been done on 50,000 Ipid investigations carried out from 2011 to 2020.
“In 95% of the cases there was no consequence whatsoever for the offender. Just over 1% of the cases were referred to the NPA and just 4% sent back to SAPS for discipline,” Newham said.
“The system for holding police accountable is collapsing and virtually doesn’t exist, and corruption and brutality are rampant.”
Themba Masuku of the African Policing Oversight Forum said the independence of Ipid was another problematic issue, as they had no forensic or DNA investigation capabilities generally needed in a rape case and were reliant on SAPS for this.
“And their budget is funded by the same police ministry,” he said.
Activist, researcher and policy expert Lisa Vetten said the lack of transparency regarding the light sentences of the four officers “completely flies in the face of criminal law, especially with regard to an offence that falls under minimum sentencing”.
The system for holding police accountable is collapsing and virtually doesn’t exist, and corruption and brutality is rampant.
Gareth Newham, above,
Institute for Security Studies