So Many Questions: Public order policing

12 July 2015 - 02:00 By Chris Barron

Concerns have been raised about the continued use of the army for public order policing. Chris Barron asked the head of governance, crime and justice at the Institute for Security Studies, Gareth Newham. Should we be concerned?Yes, I think we should be concerned with the increasing use of the military to engage in what are domestic policing issues. Because the military are trained in a very different ethos and doctrine - to use maximum force to destroy its enemies, or those trying to threaten the borders of the country. That is why we have a military. Whereas the police are trained to make arrests within a human rights framework.story_article_left1Doesn't Marikana suggest not?Well, the problem with Marikana was that it wasn't those people trained in public order policing who drafted the plan or were consulted on the plan. It was the paramilitary units, the tactical response units, that were largely responsible for the killings. They are paramilitary in nature, they're there for high-risk operations against heavily armed people attacking banks or involved in aggravated robbery using weapons. Those units should only be involved in very high-risk operations. Instead, they were deployed to do public order policing.Are there enough police trained in public order policing?We have almost 5000 officers trained in public order policing, and when those officers are deployed, then in the vast majority of crowd control incidents there are very few deaths or injuries.Why is the government not using them?That's a very good question.Some sinister motive?I think it's political. The army were deployed shortly after the xenophobic attacks in April in order to demonstrate to the many African governments outraged by the very poor response of the South African government to these attacks, that they were in control. A very visible way to demonstrate this was to deploy the military, although there was no need for it at the time. For three days there had been very little violence and the police were largely on top of the situation.Do you think there are political reasons - beyond pacifying African governments - for their continued deployment?I'm not sure. But it might be trying to also demonstrate to the public at large that the government is going to be tough on those involved in crime. Because obviously when you have troops patrolling the streets with automatic weapons, it certainly sends out a strong message.Also to those thinking of joining service delivery protests?There could be a dynamic around that. We certainly have seen very strong statements being made for a number of years that they were going to get very tough on protests. And we've seen the arrest rates of people involved in service delivery protests going up quite dramatically. So it might be part of that agenda.Haven't the police admitted that there are so many protests now that they're out of their depth, they can't cope?Yes, they have. And I think what they're really saying is that when they have to use police for crowd control purposes, it is diverting resources away from their core mandate, which is crime prevention.story_article_right2It's a good argument, isn't it?Yes, it is, and the response to that argument should be that we need to solve the political problems as to why people are using public protest as a way of politically engaging. Because what we know from research is that people complain to their local government about service delivery but don't get a response. So the issue is really about the accountability and responsiveness of government structures, and the police cannot solve that. To respond by adding more force is heading for disaster.If using the army frees up scarce police resources to fight crime, isn't it justified?I would question whether we do have scarce police resources. If you look at the fact that the SAPS has grown by almost 70000 people over the past decade, so that we have almost 200000 people in the SAPS. Only 5000 of those are trained in public order policing.So there is a shortage of resources in that respect?It would be interesting to look at the extent to which public protests really are diverting all 200000 officers from fighting crime if only 5000 are involved in public order policing. Those are the arguments being made by the police.Given what we know from the Marikana commission and the willingness of senior police officers to speak on political perspectives rather than operational knowledge and professionalism, I would question a lot of those comments. Before we start rushing towards a military response, government should do what it should be doing - which is ensuring that its response takes into account people's needs. I don't see that taking place.If it's a choice between using the army or anarchy?When there's a complete collapse of stability, law and order, when people are running riot in the streets, attacking buildings and killing people, such as we saw with the xenophobic attacks in 2008, then the military should be deployed as a last resort. But what we're seeing is politicians jumping too quickly for political reasons to using the military, which is setting a dangerous precedent. Rather than saying: is this absolutely the last resort, are our 200000 police officials really that incapable, unskilled, untrained?..

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