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| NEWS > 02 March 2008 |
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New Orleans police accused of
The American Civil Liberties Union sued the city of New Orleans, its police chief and the police department Wednesday on behalf of a New Orleans man who said he was brutalized by a group of officers.
The lawsuit is the latest bad news for a city struggling with crime while it recovers from 2005's Hurricane Katrina. Earlier this month, the latest FBI figures said the 162 murders in 2006 made the city far bloodier than any other in the United States.
New Orleans' murder rate and the aggressive policing policies in response have given some officers the idea they can ignore p... Read more
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San Francisco Chronicle - CA,
02 March 2008
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Scorpions, South Africa
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South Africa: Elite crime figh
As a defense attorney in one of the world's crime capitals, Sanele Mtshazo said his greatest asset was police bungling: In nearly every case, there was botched evidence or missing fingerprints, ballistics or DNA reports.
Often, he ruefully watched someone he had defended walk free, and thought, "That one should have gone to jail." Once, it was a man he thought had raped a child.
Feeling he was fighting on the wrong side, he switched sides after just two years, becoming an investigator in the Scorpions, South Africa's elite anti-crime task force, trained by the FBI and Scotland Yard.
But the ruling African National Congress, in particular party President Jacob Zuma and his allies, plan to dismantle the unit, which has investigated him for corruption. Despite the Scorpions' success in fighting corruption and organized crime, the ANC voted at its December conference that the unit should be dissolved and replaced with a police task force.
The vote came days after Zuma swept to power, and amid news he was about to be indicted. Zuma is heir apparent to succeed President Thabo Mbeki next year, but if convicted would not be allowed to lead the country.
Crime analysts see the vote as a major blow in the fight against corruption.
"It would basically mean they would cease to exist. Anyone who says they are just moving them is not telling the truth in my view," said Jean Redpath, an independent crime analyst.
The Scorpions have stung many top ANC figures besides Zuma. Others include police Commissioner Jackie Seleb, who was forced to stand down after being charged with corruption, and Winnie Madikizela-Mandela and former ANC parliamentary whip, Tony Yengeni, both convicted of fraud.
When launched in 1999, with crime spiraling, the Scorpions fired South Africa's imagination. The force recruited professionals and graduates, many with multiple degrees. The first head of the federal investigative and prosecutorial unit, Frank Dutton, was lured back from Bosnia, where he was investigating war crimes for the United Nations.
The Scorpions zipped about in flashy white cars decorated with a large red scorpion logo and adopted Dutton's slogan for the unit: "Loved by the people, feared by criminals, respected by peers."
Inside the Scorpions, the atmosphere was idealistic and exhilarating.
In one of its first high-profile busts in 2000, the force nabbed a drug ring and seized pills estimated to be worth about $29 million - more than the 500-employee unit's annual budget. With an 85 percent conviction rate prosecuting often high-profile cases, it has won continuing public support.
The contrast with South Africa's police - overloaded, inefficient, poorly educated and often corrupt - could not be sharper.
The key to the Scorpions' success, according to analysts, is its team approach, with a prosecutor, investigator and analyst working together from the beginning of any investigation until the end, so that the evidence needed to prove a crime is never overlooked. Scorpions spokesman, Tlali Tlali, said the "troika" approach is unique to South Africa.
"From day one, you sit with each other and work out what needs to be done. You have constant feedback," said Andrea Kasiram, who has been a prosecutor for 12 years and at 37 is one of the youngest of the Scorpion's senior managers. "This process is so different from normal investigations and prosecutions in the South African criminal justice system used in various courts. I was a (conventional) prosecutor. That methodology doesn't work. I know that methodology, I came from there."
More than 90 percent of callers in a recent South African television station poll supported the Scorpions. In contrast, 48 percent of South Africans believe that most police are corrupt and only 22 percent trust the police and military, according to opinion polls. One survey of police showed that even the police do not trust the police: Ninety-two percent of officers think police corruption is a serious problem.
Kasiram was one of the Scorpions' early recruits. A police officer's daughter in a small town in apartheid South Africa, she used to go to court with her father. "That's the one I want to be," she thought, looking at the prosecutor laying out a person's crimes.
But in the murky chaos of the criminal justice system, putting crooks in jail turned out to be difficult. Often, as a conventional prosecutor, she had not received evidence from police that she needed.
The Scorpions, Kasiram said, work long hours, but love their jobs and are more often successful than police. According to Redpath, of 500,000 cases sent to prosecutors by police each year, about 200,000 are returned for want of evidence.
"When I get my conviction, I get immense joy from putting the correct facts before the court," said Kasiram, a petite, pin-neat woman of Indian descent. "I'm a prosecutor and not a persecutor. I have to see that justice is done. That is my passion."
Despite its success, the Scorpions have been plagued with controversy. Conspiracy theories made the rounds that they spied for foreign governments or promoted an apartheid era old guard.
After the December ruling party vote, the unit is seen by analysts as the first high-profile victim in a battle between two opposing ANC factions: the new party leadership - the Zuma camp and President Thabo Mbeki's faction that still runs the government.
A parliamentary vote is still required to dismantle the unit, but the ANC has the numbers. Safety and Security Minister Charles Nqakula said this month that the unit would be dissolved and replaced by a "better" police unit.
Leading financial daily Business Day condemned the move in a front-page editorial: "Disgrace does not begin to describe the decision ... to disband the Scorpions. It is hard to imagine the damage this action will do to our reputation as a sensible country."
"There is a number of politicians who have a vested interest in seeing the demise of the Scorpions," said Colm Allan of an independent analytical group monitoring government accountability. He said 18 percent to 20 percent of the ANC's national executive committee, elected in December, has been investigated or prosecuted by the Scorpions.
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