IT HAS been more than two months since The Times lifted the lid on the activities of Morris ''Captain KGB'' Tshabalala, the police crime intelligence officer who was hired by the SAPS - and rapidly promoted - despite being convicted of armed robbery in 1994 and being sentenced to 10 years in prison, which he did not serve.
Somehow Tshabalala's criminal record was not picked up and he managed to rise to such heights within the police spy agency that he was entrusted with evaluating threats against President Jacob Zuma. His promising career came to a halt only in June this year when he was arrested for allegedly masterminding a string of cash-in-transit heists.
How was this possible, given the supposedly stringent security clearances to which members of the security services are subjected?
It soon emerged that Tshabalala was no aberration. Several weeks ago the country was stunned to learn from police management that 1448 officers had a criminal record. According to DA MP Dianne Kohler Barnard, 306 of them had criminal records before they joined the police. The rest committed their crimes while in uniform.
Yesterday's revelation - that senior officers including a major-general, 10 brigadiers, 21 colonels, 43 lieutenants-colonel and 10 majors were crooked - was even more breathtaking.
These high-ranking bad apples have enormous power, over both their fellow officers and the public.
It beggars belief that the police's screening is so pathetically weak that crooks can slip through the cracks to gain employment - and promotion - because criminal records go ''missing'' or because provincial crime databases are not in sync.
It is critical for the credibility of the police - already severely damaged by excesses such as the Marikana massacre and the Mido Macia outrage - that these loopholes be closed immediately.
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