Police brutality on the rise in SA

A RESEARCH body has warned Parliament that police brutality had increased, with civil lawsuits against the police ballooning from R105 million to R251m in three years.

A senior researcher at the Institute for Security Studies, Gareth Newham, told members of the portfolio committee on police yesterday that civil lawsuits against the police on brutality cases had increased by more than 100% between 2011 and last year.

Civil society bodies, unions and police were briefing the portfolio committee on the budget for the police for 2015/16.

Lawsuits

Newham said the lawsuits that cost the state millions in the past three years were only the cases that had been finalised in court.

He said this raised a number of questions about safety and security issues in the country. The fact that so many people had decided to sue the police was a concern, and the fact that civil claims had more than doubled was troublesome.

Newham told MPs that whereas the state had paid R105m in claims against the police in 2011, this had shot up to R187m in 2013 and then rocketed to R251m last year.

All the matters excluded civil claims that were still on the court roll, Newham said.

“It raises the question whether the people are moving away from Ipid (the Independent Police Investigative Directorate) to go to court,” he said.

A study done by the Human Sciences Research Council had shown that 41% of the population did not trust the police.

However, an analysis of the lawsuits indicated that it was only a few officers blemishing the name of the police, Newham said.

In 2013/14 there were more than 6 000 disciplinary hearings against police officers, and out of those cases 39% (2 294) were withdrawn or ended in not guilty verdicts.

He said that only 9% of the disciplinary cases had ended in dismissals.

The axing of the 537 officers was just a small number compared with the 6 000 disciplinary hearings against members of the police.

DA MP Dianne Kohler Barnard said there were still 1 148 officers who were convicted of various crimes, including murder and rape.

The issue of the dismissal of these officers was a subject of court proceedings following a court application brought by the unions.

Newham said police brutality was taking place on a larger scale.

“It is common knowledge that there are too many people who are too quick to use force,” he said.