Scary reaction to killer cop video

POLICE TOP BRASS MAKE STARTLING REVELATION

THE police top brass have made a startling claim in Parliament that officers involved in the execution of robbery suspect Khulekani Mpanza in Gauteng tried to cover up their action.

Acting national police commissioner Khomotso Phahlane told the portfolio committee on police yesterday that it was after their involvement together with the police watchdog, the Independent Police Investigative Directorate, that the truth emerged.

The police and the directorate also confirmed to MPs that they had started the investigation before the matter had been published at the weekend.

Phahlane and senior officers in the police briefed the committee on the weekend reports of the execution of Mpanza after a robbery at a shop in Krugersdorp in October.

Phahlane said the information that was given by the six implicated officers to their superiors was different from the actual killing of Mpanza last month.

It took the viewing of the video for the police and the directorate to be convinced it was an execution.

They decided that the officers should be charged with murder and defeating the ends of justice.

They also face suspension from the police service.

“What was reported is the opposite of what happened. What was reported is a coverup. We need to look at where the lapse was (in terms of police regulations),” said Phahlane.

“Yes, we know that in pursuing someone members would have shot someone. But we did not have the details that this was an execution,” he told MPs.

The officers breached the regulations in finishing off the suspect.

He assured Parliament that action would be taken against those responsible.

“There is a saying that goes ‘no stone will be left unturned’. We will be looking at all the angles in this matter,” he said.

The officers would have to answer for their failure to give a correct version of what happened on that day.

Instead of reporting an execution, they said something else had happened.

Their version to the police and the directorate was that they pursued Mpanza after a robbery and he shot at them.

The police returned fire and he was killed in the process. But they left out the fact that he was executed after he fell to the ground.

Phahlane said the officers tried to protect each other when the matter came to the attention of the police and the directorate.

He said they were still working on the suspension of the officers.

The regulations would determine whether they were suspended with or without pay, depending on the gravity of each individual’s case.

The next step would be disciplinary action.

This was a separate process from the criminal case currently under way in the Krugersdorp Magistrate’s Court, where the suspects appeared this week.

Phahlane said the disciplinary regulations were not selective. They applied across the board. He assured MPs that the police officers would have to account for their actions and there would be consequences for any wrongful action.

THE video published by the Sunday Times last weekend showing a police officer killing Khulekani Mpanza has elicited the most shocking and bloodthirsty responses from people calling in to radio talk shows and others commenting on Twitter.

Far too many South Africans seem to have no regard for the life of a (black?) person branded a “criminal” while cheering on the police officer for taking the law into his own hands and imposing the death penalty on a person without that person having been convicted of any crime by an impartial and independent court.

It is unimaginable that any person would argue it is acceptable for a police officer to walk up to a politician accused of corruption and to pump a bullet into the back of his head because that politician is a “criminal” who must be “taught a lesson”.

It is also unimaginable that any person would argue that it is acceptable for a police officer to walk up to an unarmed politician suspected of having shot at somebody at a previous occasion and to pump a bullet into the back of the politician’s head because the politician is a “criminal” posing a threat to the life and safety of police officers and members of the public.

It is also unimaginable (I hope again) that any person would argue that it is perfectly acceptable for a police officer called to the scene of an armed robbery to walk up to the (now unarmed) owner of the house where the armed robbery took place and to pump a bullet into the back of the owner’s head because he had shot at an armed robber.

Prohibited

These things are unimaginable because we are supposed to live in a society in which police officers enforce the law, not break it; one in which police protect us, not murder us; where they are prohibited from taking the law into their own hands; or where they are an all-powerful prosecutor, judge and executioner.

Police officers are prohibited from taking the law into their own hands exactly to protect every one of us against police lawlessness.

Because only a court can say whether any one of us is guilty of a crime, and because it is so easy to assume somebody is a criminal without having all the facts at hand, it is unconscionable that police officers could be empowered to decide that a person is guilty of a crime and then to execute that person.

I understand that many South Africans are fearful of crime and that they believe those accused of crime should be harshly punished.

What is difficult to understand is that some get so bloodthirsty and irrational that they cheer on a police officer committing murder, not thinking for a moment that they could have been the victim.

They forget that when police officers unlawfully deploy extreme violence and in effect act as vigilantes, it brutalises us all and contributes to the atmosphere of violence and lawlessness. Many don’t understand that it is in their own interest to insist that police officers obey the law.

Today such people cheer on a police officer who executes an unarmed person who might have been involved in criminal activity.

Next week, when that same police officer shoots and kills a family member, they will be the first to complain.

The fact that many people are nevertheless prepared to entrust police officers with the power to kill some citizens as they see fit, speaks to a lack of respect for the dignity and rights of fellow South Africans.

The constitution is often said to “protect criminals”. This is completely misguided. The constitution protects every person, including criminal suspects and those accused of committing crimes.

This means a police officer does not have the power to decide that a criminal suspect is a criminal. Neither does the officer have the right to punish the suspect for allegedly having committed a crime.