With surging extortion cases and crime running rampant in some provinces, police minister Senzo Mchunu has disclosed that police have an alarming shortage of detectives in regions with high levels of crime.
In his response to parliamentary questions by Rise Mzansi’s Makashule Gana, Mchunu said the total number of detectives employed in the police stood at 22,413 and the country was experiencing a shortage of 8,594 individuals.
The country has experienced an alarming increase in extortion incidents, signalling a crisis in police crime intelligence. Eastern Cape premier Oscar Mabuyane has said the province had been without a head of crime intelligence for almost a year, hampering efforts to effectively deal with the economic sabotage caused by protection fee syndicates.
TimesLIVE Premium reported that Mabuyane said beyond a call for the SA National Defence Force (SANDF) to be deployed, the province needed an intelligence-driven programme to combat criminal syndicates.
Crime intelligence is said to be dysfunctional and divided.
According to Mchunu, KwaZulu-Natal has the highest shortage of detectives at 1,629, with the Western Cape (1,555) and Eastern Cape (1,465) following closely behind. These three provinces have been the most problematic for police. On Monday, six suspects wanted for crimes including murder and extortion were killed during a shoot-out with police in Durban.
Last week, reports emerged that an Eastern Cape school principal was killed on the premises by a lone gunman.
In a separate incident, a group stormed the home of a nurse from the Efata School for the Blind in Mthatha and demanded payment of R50,000. The nurse refused and was robbed of his phone, laptop and television. The criminals sent a message to the Efata school principal demanding the same ransom.
The City of Cape Town previously warned that more than R58m worth of transport projects were in jeopardy due to extortion attempts.
According to Mchunu, 527 detectives had voluntarily left the police from October 1 2023 to July 19 2024.
Other provinces experiencing a shortage of detectives include Limpopo with 913 vacancies, the Free State (783), Northern Cape (695), North West (545), Mpumalanga (519) and Gauteng (490).
Mchunu said the total number of civil claims pending against the police to the end of June 2024 were 43,954 in respect of alleged recklessness, negligence and misconduct cases.
The total amount of contingent liability is estimated at R65.36bn, he said.
Gana said communities were frustrated as cases are dropped by police due to the shortage of detectives. He added that some police detectives had complained of a high volume of case files.
“You will find that visible policing will make an arrest, but then the cases don’t go far because there is no capacity to investigate and build a case for the arrested criminals to be prosecuted and sent to jail. You will end up having a lot of criminals, they get arrested, but a couple of days later they get released because when they appear before the magistrate, the investigation has not been done properly and cases are sent back by prosecutors because there is no prospect of success.”
This resulted in criminals evading prison time because there was no attention given to the many cases reported to the police, he added.
According to correctional services minister Pieter Groenewald, 21,629 awaiting-trial prisoners were housed by the department across the country’s correctional facilities. These detainees were charged with serious crimes including rape, murder and economic sabotage.
Gauteng had the highest number of awaiting-trial detainees at 5,803, of whom 266 have been remanded for more than five years and 587 awaiting trial for more than three years. The province is closely followed by the Western Cape (4,828) and Eastern Cape (3,079).
The minister’s report indicates that 9,655 detainees have been awaiting trial for more than six months, 7,533 for up to two years, 2,426 for almost three years, and 1,525 awaiting-trial inmates for over three years.
Gana said he was concerned that the largest number of extortion rings were prevalent in provinces with the most severe shortage of detectives. This led to communities losing trust in the police, resulting in allegations that police were collaborating with criminals, he said.
He said part of the problem were the general working conditions for police, high caseloads and the slow rate of training detectives.
“Another problem is that you have, on a monthly basis, over 50 detectives leaving their jobs, mostly going to the private sector where they then become private investigators and get employed by either the security industry or the financial institutions. So you have multiple factors that contribute to this. On one side there is a shortage, on another there are 50 detectives that leave their jobs to pursue opportunities outside the SAPS.”
He said those that leave are usually the younger cohort.
Gana said the government must improve working conditions at station level and increase support for the police, who continued to work under difficult circumstances.
“If the only thing you focus on is arrests, then the frustration in communities will continue because those that are arrested will never get to be prosecuted and sent to jail. You need properly investigated cases for criminals to be sent to jail.”
Addressing parliament on Tuesday, Mchunu said police were hard at work fighting extortion rackets and were focusing efforts on Nelson Mandela Bay and Mthatha in the Eastern Cape.
Mchunu said the government needed to strengthen and improve intelligence. While communities reported those crimes, it was not enough.
TimesLIVE
Would you like to comment on this article?
Sign up (it's quick and free) or sign in now.
Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.