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| NEWS > 07 July 2007 |
Other related articles:
Ocean Beach cops acquitted of
Two police officers were acquitted Friday of nearly all the charges brought against them after a Fire Island tourist suffered a ruptured bladder in their custody.
On their ninth day of deliberations, jurors found Ocean Beach acting Police Chief George Hesse, 40, of East Islip, not guilty of the top two counts against him - first-degree gang assault and second-degree assault - along with reckless endangerment and several other charges. The jury remains deadlocked on a lesser charge of third-degree assault, a misdemeanor with a maximum sentence of a year in jail. Jurors will continue de... Read more
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 Article sourced from
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Independent Online - Cape Town
07 July 2007
This article appeared in the above title/site.
To view it in its entirity click this link.
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South Africa Police Service
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South Africa: Police Rotten to
A former police inspector with 17 years' experience was jailed for firearm fraud. Now he has admitted that was just one of a myriad crimes he committed while a police officer.
They included pimping prostitutes, car hijacking and raiding drug dens only to sell off the merchandise to rival dealers.
In a week in which shocking police crime statistics showed the Western Cape was still the South African crime capital, Liza Grobler, an expert who interviewed a number of police officers in the province jailed for a variety of crimes, asked: "How can you expect crime to come down when the police service is rotten to the core?"
In another case she researched, an ex-member of the flying squad who was jailed for murder described how he "moonlighted" as a nightclub bouncer and was a member of the triads - the Chinese mafia. He extorted money from Chinese immigrants, smuggled cocaine, diamonds and shark fins. He turned killer when his gang boss ordered him to "eliminate" a rival gang member.
Grobler, a criminologist, obtain-ed her PhD for her thesis titled "A Criminological Examination of Police Criminality".
The eight former police offenders she interviewed in jail were from 31 to 42 years old. They had served in the force for up to 21 years. Their ranks ranged from constable to inspector and captain. Their sentences varied from four to 25 years and their crimes from fraud to murder.
Her work has been handed to provincial Police Commissioner Mzwandile Petros and Community Safety MEC Leonard Ramatlakane, in the hope it can be used to help stamp out corruption. But she said she has not "heard a peep" from them.
Grobler has also backed a recent report on the state of policing in the province penned by 15 people including forensic expert David Klatzow and Paul Hoffman, director of the Centre for Constitutional Rights, senior advocates and politicians.
It calls for a commission of inquiry and notes the urgent need to devise joint strategies to improve and protect the police service.
Grobler said: "The extent to which police are involved in criminal activity made my hair stand on end. There are criminals masquerading as police."
Crimes police were involved in included tipping off dealers or syndicates about pending raids, drugs, assault, murder, vehicle theft and perlemoen syndicates, gangs, bribery, fraud, extortion, theft, rape, tampering with evidence and sabotaging cases by "losing" dockets.
She said most of the police crime was drug- or gang-related. Not only were they using drugs, but also robbed drug dealers. Police would receive a tip from one dealer about another's shipment, conduct a raid, steal the drugs and then sell them to the first dealer. There were also cases where members would hijack a perlemoen consignment and sell it to rival syndicates.
Police would tip dealers off about a raid for a fee, or take a cash or drug bribe "to turn a blind eye". Some members would even help transport illegal goods or facilitate a safe passage out of the airport.
She said police who were drug couriers for gangs often got involved with perlemoen smuggling as well.
"The relationship between cops and gangs is a system, but not the kind involving handing over an envelope in the dark," she said. Gangs recruited police the way they recruited members, identifying officers with leadership potential. They create schemes to hook them.
She said in one case a police officer was renovating his house. The gang leader put R25 000 into his bank account as an anonymous gift, and he used the money. He then got roped into doing "favours" for the gang. But she said the gangsterism link could start with small things, like providing police with meat and alcohol for a party at the station.
She was told police braais of this kind were common at one station in a gang-ridden area. It was also common practice to pilfer goods from the station's exhibits store, where all confiscated goods such as drugs and firearms were held.
She said there were police involved with most syndicates - vehicle theft, cash-in-transit heists, hijackings and the minibus taxi industry. "They said heists are orchestrated by ex-MK soldiers."
Police involvement in registering stolen vehicles and issuing clearance certificates without seeing the car was rife. A former police officer told her how "he wore a balaclava and helped hijack a car from a woman motorist".
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