The crime stats may bear it out but #SliceofGasant columnist Gasant Abarder read first-hand victim testimonies of just how rotten policing was in the Western Cape. It is no wonder that crime was a full-time business because criminals get away with it with help from the boys in blue.
Last week, I was stuck in a traffic jam on my way home when a chap who looked old enough to be my dad squeezed into the turning lane on my right and proceeded to clip my side mirror. The impatient driver ignored my frantic hooting and kept going. I followed him up to the intersection, where he turned right and I lost sight of his car.
I had managed to memorise his licence plate number and was about to head to the closest police station. Then I remembered how a while back my son and I had been forced to a stop on the N2 highway and officers at both Athlone Police Station and Lansdowne Police Station refused to take my case – The long arm of the law is broken and crooked. In their minds, there wasn’t a gun involved so it wasn’t an attempted hijacking.
I wrote to the Western Cape Police Ombudsman about the attitude of the officers at the two police stations. It was more than a year ago. Nothing has happened since.
I changed my mind about reporting the latest wrongdoer. There was no point. There was no damage to the mirror and the police would just laugh it off even though I had a legitimate case of reckless and negligent driving. Nothing would come of their inaction.
It was fortuitous that the Western Cape Police Ombudsman copied me in an email to its entire database, asking the hundreds of people in the message to participate in a survey about its service. The replies were angry. The vast majority, bar one, felt the ombud was toothless and did nothing to help their case against rotten cops. To boot, the ombud’s office broke Protection of Personal Information Act (POPIA) laws by distributing the emails of hundreds of civilians.
The kinds of complaints made my incident pale in comparison.
One irate client of the ombud wrote: ‘…I have tried many times to get police/metro police/law enforcement involved and to date nothing has happened. A 14-year-old girl was held on the property under the influence of drug abuse. A lady was raped on the property, yet nothing was done to date. I went as far as informing JP Smith via his Facebook page, and still no assistance. But if we take law into our own hands then we are immediately locked up and dragged to court. We have a huge problem on the property I complained about. Drug abuse and gangsters frequent this property. They burned a piece of the next-door neighbour’s house completely down in March because of making fire on this property. The ombudsman has been of no assistance, yet wants our time to do a survey? Your service is as putrid as our law enforcement.’
Another client of the ombud replied with images that showed how a police vehicle had crashed through his home and there were no consequences. He wrote: ‘Police van crashed into a flat I was renting and damaged property and my goods inside. God, no justice or compensation.’
A third wrote: ‘So useless. What did the Ombudsman do to help me? After I was physically beaten pink, blue and purple now they want to come here and ask us to survey nonsense? Nxa, even SAPS did nothing. What’s the use of even asking me two years later if they were useful? The only thing you useful for is asking nonsense.’
Another wrote: ‘My son was under age three years ago. Him and friends were beaten up by the Grassy Park anti-gang unit for being at the wrong place at the wrong time. They drove in a similar BMW but not the same colour that was part of a gang shooting the previous day… Case I made just disappeared and was never heard from them again.’
But among the most disturbing of the several responses was this one: ‘… This forum is a waste of time. I received more emails regarding this survey than my initial complaint itself which was related to an attempted toddler kidnapping. Who knows, maybe if the police (ombudsman) actually did something, less kids would be missing but I guess that’s not important. Good luck to all our SA citizens and tourists. The risk is yours and yours truly…’
The ombud’s gaffe opened my eyes to how law-abiding citizens are put through secondary trauma by the very people meant to protect them. They didn’t mind at all that they were part of an email thread that was clogging their inboxes. This was their opportunity to have their say.
It also made me realise that by not reporting last week’s incident of reckless and negligent driving, I was part of the problem. I needed to allow justice to run its course and see to it that the police do their jobs. I’m reporting the guy with the CF plates to the cops today.
Also read:
Picture: Supplied