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Schalk van Zuydam / AP. More than 1,400
serving police officers in South Africa, or about one in 100, have a criminal
record for serious, violent offences (Photo: Toronto Star)
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Now
here is an extremely shocking story about the South African Police. A South
African not-for-profit Institute
of Race Relations report into crimes committed by South Africa’s police force
draws a disturbing picture: dozens of officers charged for the murders, armed
robberies and rapes of citizens they are sworn to protect. Typical
case showed officer would stop a young woman in a public place, before taking
her away to be raped in the back of a police vehicle.To download report, click.
The story continues here:
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Front Cover of Broken
Blue Line 2 – Feb 2015 (IRR Report) Click here to download report.
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Daily Mail and Toronto Star disclose a shocking report has revealed how large numbers of
policemen in South Africa are 'regularly' arresting young women in order to
rape them.
The 'Broken Blue Line' conducted by the Johannesburg-based
Institute of Race Relations, investigated the extent in which police officers
in the country plan and execute serious and violent crimes such as murder,
rape, and armed robbery.
And it drew a disturbing conclusion: that police involvement
in serious and violent crimes, including rape and murder, were a 'pattern of
behaviour' and not isolated incidents.
The report, funded by Afriforum, analyzed 100 randomly
chosen media reports from April 2011 to January 2015 on alleged police
involvement in serious crimes.
Of those, 32 were murders and attempted murders, 22 were
armed robberies, and 26 were rapes, as well as other serious offences.
The results were compared against two sources of information
on disciplinary action against police officers implicated in
crimes.
The project has been undertaken by the IRR since 2011 (click here for 2011 report) to
track police involvement in criminality.
In 2015, it found that officers exploit
their official status and equipment to perpetrate crimes and rely on that
status to escape arrest and prosecution.
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IRR CEO Frans Cronje,
pictured, called the findings 'disturbing'
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The latest report describes
“significant evidence of a trend” of police officers detaining women in order
to rape them. South Africa has one of the highest recorded rates of rape in the
world.
In a number of incidents reported by
media, a police officer would stop a young woman in a public place, before
taking her away to be raped in the back of a police vehicle and then setting
her free.
“It is often with good reason that
the public fear the police, especially with regard to sexual violence and rape
perpetrated by officers against vulnerable women — the most frightening finding
of the report,” the report said.
South African police have faced
numerous allegations of corruption and brutality in recent years.
A two-year audit of the country’s
police service, released in 2013, found that of 157,500 officers, 1,448 of them
had been convicted of crimes.
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South Africa National
police commissioner General Riah Phiyega
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Responding to the report, the South
African Police Service criticized the methodology as containing “dangerous
generalizations, apparently mostly based on media reports, interviews with
journalists and some form of engagement with the IPID [Independent Police
Investigative Directorate, an independent oversight body].”
“We do not support it and feel that it was
funded and released with malicious intent,” Riah Phiyega, South Africa’s
national police commissioner, said in a statement.
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