Thousands of potentially criminal cases against cops dropped

The police watchdog dropped more than 2,400 potentially criminal cases against law enforcement officials on the National Prosecuting Authority’s (NPA’s) desk between April last year and March this year.

The latest figures suggest, so far, less than 1% of those cases have resulted in decisions to prosecute. The Independent Police Investigative Directorate (Ipid) appeared before the portfolio committee on police for a performance briefing yesterday, when its low prosecution rates for the 2019-20 financial year came under the spotlight.

According to Ipid’s last quarterly report, the NPA had only given its thumbs up to nine of the 2,426 cases referred to it by the directorate during this period. It had declined to prosecute another 239 of them, while several more were still awaiting a decision or had been withdrawn.

But Ipid’s new head, Jennifer Ntlatseng, has a plan up her sleeve to address the issue. Ntlatseng yesterday told the committee she had met National Director of Public Prosecutions (NDPP) advocate Shamila Batohi, who had identified the quality of Ipid’s investigations as the problem.

“She indicated issues around quality – how our dockets are crafted and how we don’t have sufficient evidence,” Ntlatseng told the committee.

“The NDPP indicated to me that the quality of the cases brought to her, in most cases, did not warrant prosecution”.

Ntlatseng planned to deal with this by appointing a team of “legal quality assurers” to give dockets intended for referral to the NPA a once-over before sending them on.

“And that’s something we’ll be doing by the end of October,” she said, adding that cases the NPA had declined to prosecute would be reopened and looked at again.

Johan Burger from the Institute for Security Studies (ISS) yesterday said Ipid’s performance issues were the result, in part, of a severe lack of resources and that the recent instability in the directorate’s leadership had also played a role.

In 2015, then Ipid head Robert McBride was suspended after he was accused of meddling with a report. But a year and a half later, the Constitutional Court declared his suspension unconstitutional and he was reinstated. When his contract expired in February, though, it was not renewed and the directorate was rudderless until Ntlatseng took office in August.

Berger was hopeful Ntlatseng’s appointment would mark a turning point for the directorate. He was particularly optimistic about her plans to recruit retired directors to help clear the massive backlog at Ipid, which she also spoke about yesterday.

“Since the establishment of its predecessor, the Independent Complaints Directorate, in 1997, Ipid has struggled to get the kind of resources it needs to properly perform its function,” Berger said.

He pointed out that cases against police officials were often more difficult to investigate than cases against civilians and said this was because of various reasons, including a culture of silence within the police.

“So Ipid has to rely on getting experienced detectives and that’s not an easy thing to do,” he said. But he said retired detectives came with a wealth of experience and that there was a willingness among them to get involved in this kind of work.

– bernadettew@citizen.co.za

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