There is no escaping the grim reality of living in a violent society where hardened criminals commit heinous crimes with zero respect for human life or the law.
Bullets fly at traffic intersections, on our highways, through the suburbs and smash into innocent bystanders, some of them children. Whether it be to tear off a motorist's gold watch, blow up a cash-in-transit van, seeking revenge in a gang turf war or to “enforce” an extortion demand, the streets of our country are seemingly awash with illegal firearms.
Such high levels of violence pose significant risks to police and law enforcement officers pursuing hardened criminals who have no qualms about unleashing their firepower when confronted by the law. Deadly shoot-outs are commonplace nowadays. Six suspected cash-in-transit robbers were killed in a clash with police on Monday in Laudium, Tshwane. A day earlier, five suspected robbers died in a gun battle with police in KwaZulu-Natal.
Concerns have been raised about the numbers of criminals killed in exchanges of gunfire with police, particularly when they find themselves cornered in a hideout or on the way to pull off a suspected heist. These incidents are routinely probed by the Independent Police Investigative Directorate (Ipid).
As things stand, a section of the Criminal Procedure Act makes provision for SAPS to use deadly force only if a suspect poses a threat of serious violence to the arrester or any other person. But that may change.
Four discussion papers were recently released by the South African Law Reform Commission on the review of the criminal justice system, seeking public comment on how it could be transformed to be more effective and efficient.
One of these deals with the use of deadly force, which has been found to be problematic as it provides leeway to shoot even if the threat is not immediate. Up for public comment is a proposed narrower definition with the subsection amended to require the threat be “immediate” to the life of the arrester or any other person.
That decision could be a matter of a few seconds or less.
Deputy justice and correctional development minister Andries Nel said various concerns were raised about crime and the rights of people to be and feel safe. He conceded there were divergent and irreconcilably contradictory views about the state of the criminal justice system in South Africa. While some said the system was an oppressive and untransformed relic of apartheid, others said the constitution went overboard and that criminals enjoyed more rights than law-abiding citizens, especially victims of crime, reported TimesLIVE Premium.
There are arguments for and against the use of deadly force in different circumstances. Gareth Newham, head of justice and violence prevention at the Institute for Security Studies, previously told the Sunday Times after the fatal shooting last year of nine suspects in KwaZulu-Natal that with proper planning, suspects could be arrested and valuable intelligence gleaned through interrogation.
This could link suspects to other crimes whose victims would be able to come forward and get a sense of justice. This would build trust in the police and criminal justice system as a whole.
But on the flip side, citizens are fed up with violent crime and many applaud criminals meeting an early demise through the barrel of a gun.
IRS Forensic Investigations director Chad Thomas warned in an interview with EWN on Tuesday, that tightening restrictions on when to use deadly force could harm the country as many criminals had no respect for authority or the lives of police, security officers and civilians. His greatest concern was that police would become hesitant to execute their duties, as he said happened in the late 1990s when section 49 of the act was changed to impose stricter rules on the use of deadly force by police.
While no country should condone extrajudicial killings by any arm of the state — though it happens regardless in many places — we do not want police to handle violent criminals with kid gloves in South Africa. Crime and extortion have reached intolerable levels and we cannot continue on this path.
Strengthening our intelligence-gathering capacity and introducing updated technology such as tamper-proof body cameras for evidence gathering will go some way towards the war on thuggery, but we dare not let our guard down.
Police should not be afraid to meet fire with fire under life-threatening circumstances.
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