Getting Back to Basics - Simple Steps Towards Regaining Respect for the SAPS
blurb:isstoday:221008saps
22 October 2008: Getting Back to Basics - Simple Steps Towards Regaining Respect for the SAPS
In light of recent media reports of brutality meted out by members of the South African Police Service (SAPS), doubt is once again cast over the discipline and respect for the law of some SAPS members. Police, like the rest of us, are citizens of South Africa. They experience the same anger, frustration and fears regarding crime as the rest of us. Like the vigilante groups who beat a youth caught stealing clothes off a washing line, some police would also like to see offenders punished swiftly. While one may empathise with their frustrations, the police should be better than this.
In his latest book Thin Blue: The unwritten rules of policing South Africa, Jonny Steinberg describes members of the South African Police Service (SAPS) adapting the manner in which they engage the public to the context in which they find themselves. This is not a new view of policing (and Steinberg doesn’t pretend it is). For decades, researchers and academics have commented on the manner in which police learn the skill of appearance management. The theory goes that police are formally and informally taught to adapt their demeanor based on circumstance. As such, a versatile officer is able to play the ‘tough cop’ in the presence of criminals, the social worker with lost children, the counselor to victims of crime, the leader, the protector, the brave and the wise, depending on the context in which they find themselves. Such an officer is able to appear competent and in control in any situation.
The difference in Steinberg’s reading is that it is not the SAPS but the public who decide which face the police may wear and the action that accompanies it. Policing is a discretion-based system wherein officers make often contradictory decisions (often influenced by race, class and personal interpretations of justice), on a daily basis about whether or not to apply the law in any given situation. Steinberg proposes that in many instances this discretion is curtailed by the public who decide the extent to which they are policed. While many who have experienced the more rigid policing approaches of some developed countries prefer the freedoms afforded South Africans through the inconsistencies of our policing approach, those developed countries generally do not suffer the same violent and pervasive crime found in South Africa.
Consider for example a scenario described by Steinberg: Two police discover a group of men drinking in public. They empty one of the numerous beers on the ground and drive away. Does this serve a purpose, or should they have retreated, called for backup, and arrested or fined the group? Would such an act be feasible in our current situation where, as the old saying goes “there are more important things requiring police attention”?
While it is true that there are always far more heinous crimes being committed elsewhere, these crimes generally occur beyond the gaze of patrolling police. Very often the search for these “more important crimes” involves driving around conducting “crime prevention” patrols. While such patrols may be justified if police take action against offenders such as the public drinkers, simply showing a presence has never been proven to have any effect on crime reduction. In the meantime the drinkers are likely to become either the perpetrators or victims of more serious crime as the night wears on.
The problem in Steinberg’s example is two-fold. In addition to his concern that the large group of offenders themselves may intimidate the police out of enforcing the law, the notion that there are so many more serious crimes to deal with gives the police an additional excuse not to act.
The danger in this is that interpretations of police discretion in a country as violent as South Africa, threaten to become too broad. A crime considered petty (though potentially the precursor to something fatal) is left ignored. On the rare occasion that the crime is policed, the offender feels unfairly treated, having witnessed police turn a blind eye so many times before. The result of this inconsistent application of the law is that citizens develop the habit of ignoring certain legislation after repeatedly witnessing police ignore or participate in it themselves. These include a disregard for speed limits and for wearing of seatbelts and drunk driving. Again, many would say such crimes need not be policed – and they seldom are. Yet citizens never cease to complain about the country’s murder rate, a figure only marginally higher than the road death toll (14 627 road deaths to 18 487 for 2007/08). Also, while the SAPS are not strictly mandated to enforce traffic legislation, their general disregard for traffic laws, whether broken by themselves or those around them, further weakens any standing or respect the public might hold for them.
Why is there no fear of reprisal when a civilian talking on his cell phone overtakes a police vehicle on the left hand side while grossly exceeding the speed limit? Do police, like most members of this society, consider this acceptable? While conducting stop and searches of the tens of thousands of unlicensed, speeding, law-violating vehicles on South Africa’s roads is perhaps one of the most effective crime prevention methods at their disposal, this almost never occurs. If it did, and if it was done professionally and with the right level of courtesy and absence of abuse of power, would the police not rapidly and infinitely improve both their image and influence over the criminal landscape?
While Steinberg’s analysis is in some ways correct, it is incomplete. Although the public in some instances might dictate the extent to which they are policed, the police facilitate and complete this cycle by accenting to their crimes. Each time a motorist speeds past a police van without fear of retribution, each time a SAPS member fails to buckle up, each time a member abuses his power for personal (or ostensibly “just” gain such as the recent abuses documented in the media) another slither of respect is sliced from the blue block of the law.
Of course we don’t want a dictatorial or police state, but nor should we encourage the spread of a national culture which disrespects basic laws. One step necessary for this to change is that the SAPS start leading by example, obeying traffic legislation and acting against those who blatantly disregard the law in their presence. Our police must learn to manage their appearances within the ambit of the law and the oath they took to serve the citizens of this country.
Andrew Faull, Researcher, Crime, Justice and Politics Programme, ISS Tshwane (Pretoria)
