Unresolved cases: As crime increases, SAPS continues to lose detectives

Despite an increase in the crime statics yearly, particularly in murder and rape cases, the number of police detectives remains the same as it was 12 years ago.

The shortages in SAPS detectives has been a long-standing problem. In 2012 the police portfolio committee in parliament, with crime experts and police management, flagged the shortages to be the major challenge in crime investigations. A report titled ‘the detectives’ dialogue’ was published with recommendations to address the debacle.

12 years later, Minister of Police Bheki Cele in a written answer to parliament revealed that majority of provinces still suffer from insufficiencies of the critical unit. 

North West led with 32.8%, Northern Cape 25.9%, Western Cape 24.3%, Free State 23.7%, KwaZulu-Natal 23.3%, Limpopo 19.3%, Mpumalanga 14,3%, Eastern Cape 10.6% and Gauteng 5.2%.

Independent crime analyst Dr Johann Burger contributed to the detectives report and told TimesLIVE not much has been done to address the problem over the years. 

“Then [2012] per detective had about 150-200 cases, which is an impossible workload to properly investigate each case. 

“It is becoming worse because our crime levels have increased dramatically since 2011/2012, apart from 2020. The murder rate increased by 54% since 2011/2012 and aggravated robberies increased by more than 40%.

“Despite that report with recommendations by parliament, very little if anything, was done to solve the problem of detective shortages,” he said. 

Burger said the number of police officers, including detectives, continued to decrease.

According to SAPS, in 2011, it had 193,892 employees which consisted of 37,402 detective services employees.

In the 2022 annual report, there were 176,180 employees consisting of 37,246 detective service employees. This was a decrease of 156 employees in the investigators unit compared to 12 years ago when staff shortages had already been flagged. 

“We have fewer detectives for a growing crime rate. This spells disaster, if not attended to it will cause us a huge number of problems,” Burger said.

This week, SAPS recruited 552 new police officers in an attempt to deal with staff shortages.

While noting this was a good move, Burger said it would not solve the detectives' issue. 

“The young recruits do not have the experience and expertise of the many detectives we have lost. It will take years to grow the expertise.

“They [SAPS] need to go back to the turn-around-strategy report. Why don’t we see the implementation of the recommendation of that report, what did they do with it?” 

In the report, Burger highlighted that detectives constituted about 14.6% of the total number of 155,000 sworn officers back in 2011 and recommended more young officers be trained as detectives. 

Meanwhile, murder cases continue to increase yearly. In 2019, 4,896 people were killed in January-March. This year, during the same period, 6,289 were killed. 

Police and prisons civil rights union (Popcru) spokesperson Richard Mamabolo told TimesLIVE detectives had huge caseloads and this negatively affected outcomes of investigations. 

He said the union raised issue of boosting investigative staff capacity to ensure cases do not get dismissed in court on the basis of being shoddy and failing victims, to SAPS management. 

“It's important to train more younger officers because a lot of detectives are older officers with expertise. The older detectives are going to run out of fuel, and for that we need a younger cohort who will take over,” Mamabolo said.

DA MP Okkie Terblanche said unsolved cases erode the public’s trust in police. 

“I read statement by Dr Chris de Kock, a crime analyst, saying the murder rate is exploding and yet detectives are only able to solve 14,5% of murders in SA; meaning 85.5% of murders are not solved.

“The only way the victims can get justice is when the detective can detect these people and get a sentence. That is unfortunately not happening, meaning there is no justice for victims of serious crimes such as murder and rape.” 

Terblanche said he was optimistic the shortage in detective units could be resolved when government works with retired officers, researchers and crime experts to better the police service. 

Police spokesperson Brigadier Athlenda Mathe, while announcing the recruitment of new officers this week, said there were 8,600 trainees, and more recruits would be added next month.

“The recruitment and training of 10,000 police officers for the 2024/2025 financial year is set to commence in July 2023. Applications will be open to young men and women between the ages of 18 and 30, in possession of a senior certificate, with no criminal record. Those who are successful will commence training in April 2024,” Mathe said.

TimesLIVE

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