Over the past five years, the Western Cape has emerged as the province with the highest number of SAPS employees, including police officers, who have faced criminal charges.
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The province recorded 1 360 personnel out of 7 166 who were charged with crimes between 2018 and 2019 and 2022 and 2023.
This was disclosed by Police Minister Bheki Cele when he finally provided data on personnel who had broken the law.
When MPs from the EFF and Freedom Front Plus inquired in July, Cele faced criticism for refusing to say how many police officers had been criminally charged.
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Cele had asked for the information this month after complaining about the lack of meticulous and rigorous information validation, claiming that inaccurate data could harm the reputation of innocent police officers.
According to Cele’s written response, during the time period, there were criminal charges brought against 6 843 police officers and 323 members of the administrative staff.
The SAPS employees were accused of committing 64 different types of crimes, including kidnapping, rape, theft, hijacking, murder, robbery, bribery and corruption.
According to Cele’s response, in the fiscal years 2022/23, there were 1 001 SAPS employees who were criminally charged.
The statistics showed that in 2018/19, 1 677 personnel were charged, followed by 1 598 in 2019/20, 1 648 in 2020/21, and 1 242 in 2021/22.
Cele claims that 688 SAPS employees in total were successfully prosecuted.
‘A total number of 261 are no longer part of the SAPS,’ he said, adding that 158 SAPS personnel were dismissed from work, 41 dishonourable discharged, 31 resigned, 19 took early retirement, five left SAPS on pension, another five died and two took ill-health retirement.’
He further revealed that 78 SAPS members were charged with kidnapping, 29 with stock theft and four with cash-in-transit heists over the past four years.
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