MPs condemn sloppy detective work

The incompetence of detectives and shoddy criminal investigations have prompted parliament's police oversight committee to request the intervention of parliament to correct the situation.

The request has been spurred by the high number of criminals, including suspected murderers and armed robbers, being set free.

The police portfolio committee said yesterday that it could no longer wait for the police themselves to deal with the situation.

There is a shortage of about 5000 detectives, leading to each detective having to handle a caseload of about 100 dockets.

Only about 30% of police stations have officers trained in detective work.

Acting portfolio committee chairman and ANC MP Annelize van Wyk said the intervention of the legislature could be sought to ensure the adequate training and reasoned promotion of police detectives.

"We can say legislatively [to parliament]: 'This is how we say promotions should happen: first qualify and only then can you be considered; you don't get promoted and then you start the training'," said Van Wyk.

During a parliamentary discussion of detective services, senior police managers said that lack of training, a shortage of instructors and appropriate technology, and funding constraints were hampering police investigations.

Incompetent detectives, they said, were dealing with sensitive investigations and gathering evidence at crime scenes.

DA MP Dianne Kohler Barnard referred to the quality of much detective work as "depressing".

"You have to look, for example, at the TV coverage of the [aftermath of the] killings at Marikana. We saw police picking up weapons of various descriptions with their bare hands and dumping them in piles. So basically what I saw . was the rape of the crime scene."

Such behaviour, she said, gave forensic laboratories the "almost impossible task" of having to sift through contaminated evidence.

"It seems a normal occurrence [that] the very first people at crime scenes destroy the crime scene," Kohler Barnard said.

Major-General Charles Johnson, of the police detective services division, said that though his unit had more than 23000 detectives in its employ, about 4900 had not been trained in police detective work.

The chief director of court services in the Department of Justice, Pieter du Rand, said poor police detective work was among the reasons for low conviction rates. The police often gave him weak cases to present to the courts.

Thousands of top investigators in the police were not trained to handle basic detective work and the gathering of evidence.

"People come from police service backgrounds; they are not properly trained in how to deal with crime scene investigation, in how to ensure that there is proper evidence handling and that [the evidence can] go through a court so that justice is done," said Du Rand.

Yesterday, Western Cape MEC for community safety Dan Plato condemned the "shocking" 12.7% murder conviction rate between 2007 and 2012 in areas of the Cape Flats crawling with gangsters and riddled with crime.

Of the 1469 murder cases referred for prosecution by five police stations, 921 were finalised, with 730 acquittals.

"Clearly there is a lack of quality evidence being collected by the police to secure convictions," said Plato.

The chairman of the Western Cape legislature's community safety committee, Mark Wiley, said the detective division had become "dysfunctional".

"It is short on numbers and resources and there are completely unqualified people doing the job.

"This is a national crisis. If you cannot resolve crime you've given over to crime as being a reality," he said.

Wiley said billions were being lost to organised-crime syndicates.

"We're talking about billions and billions of rands that are going undetected because we do not have the capacity [to detect the crimes]. It is undermining the economy; it is economic sabotage . because we do not have the ability to resolve crime."

Johan Burger, an Institute for Security Studies senior researcher, said it was worrying that, as well as being poorly trained, detectives were also overworked.

Because of the high crime levels, a single detective handles about 100 dockets or investigations on average instead of the acceptable 60 dockets.

"In some cases, individual detectives add to their burden by their own sloppy work, such as poor docket administration, poor quality of statements and bad time management," said Burger.

The police needed to increase detective numbers by at least 20% to decrease the workload on existing detectives and make possible the speedier resolution of cases.