The Police and Prisons Civil Rights Union (POPCRU) condemns yet another killing of a police officer who was gunned down in the early hours of this morning while responding to a false complaint in eKangala, Gauteng province.
This happens just a few weeks after 2 police officers in the same area, a husband and wife, were petrol-bombed in their home at night, leading to the death of the female officer, while the male officer, who is a detective, survived.
The random attacks and killings of police officer is once again on the rise, and needs to be urgently addressed.
South Africa has just below 200 000 police officers who are expected to keep a population of 57 million safe on a regular basis, while a huge chunk of this police complement is based at national and provincial offices with lesser capacity at stations.
We have on numerous occasions raised a grave concern on the fact that the SAPS’s human and physical resource allocation has been, and continues to be a deep-seated challenge with adverse effects to both police officers and the community at large.
More worrying is the current composition of the SAPS top structure, which is composed of 25, 25% of the total SAPS workforce; with the other percentage (14, 44%) deployed to the cluster and provincial level, leaving a limited human resource of 60, 32% on the ground. This has created duplication of functions, weak command and control, and subsequently poor service delivery at the police station level.
Our members are continuously terrorised and killed by cold-blooded criminals due to the longstanding impasse of inadequate human and physical resources as they work under unsafe and understaffed conditions, with the majority of police stations lacking basic equipment.
As part of our POPCRU national march that will be focused on the broad challenges within the Criminal Justice Cluster, taking place on the 13th of July 2018 at the Union Buildings, we will be calling for the restructuring of the SAPS in ensuring that we have more manpower and resources allocated at station level, where criminal activities are taking place.
Issued by POPCRU on 25/06/2018
For more information contact; Richard Mamabolo -Popcru Spokesperson@ 063 695 6663 or 011 242 4600