Civilian Secretariat for Police 1st Quarter Performance; Implementation of Civilian Secretariat Act; Issues raised during the Nyanga/Phillipi oversight visits

Meeting report

Ms Nicolette van Zyl Gous, a Parliamentary Researcher, briefed the Committee on Implementation of the Civilian Secretariat for Police Service Act 2011.

Mr Ivan Kinnes, Committee Content Advisor, briefed the Committee on the functions of the Civilian Secretariat for Police Service (CSP). Amongst the functions which he discussed were the Domestic Violence Reports which had to be submitted by the CSP every six months. A Consultative Forum had to be set up between IPID and CSP which had to meet at least four times per annum.  He ended off with a list of possible questions to be asked of the CSP.  

Civilian Secretariat for Police: Quarterly Report

The Chairperson said he had invited the civic organisation Nyanga Community Police Forum, which had initiated complaints, to listen to the answers given in Parliament and to participate and make Parliament more activist. The Committee wanted to know if there was progress with the work of the Civilian Secretariat for Police (CSP) and what interventions had been done. He said all reports could not be discussed because some reports had not been properly tabled in terms of the rules and the Secretary should indicate what corrective measures had been taken to avoid this in future. The meeting would thus only look at the first quarter report and on the implementation of the Act.

 

Ms Reniva Fourie, Acting Secretary of the CFP, said the flaws in the tabling processes had been fixed. The reports were ready and they were processing the tabling of it. She then spoke to the quarterly report. It covered implementation of Section 4(2) of the Act, implementation of the functions assigned to the CSP in Section 6 of the Act, progress in the establishment of provincial secretariats, the function of reference groups and forums, the functioning of provincial forums, cooperation with Independent Police Investigative Directorate (IPID), a report on its progress with reference to the Annual Performance Plan and a breakdown of expenditure.

Mr Dumazweni Zimu, of the CSP, spoke to inter -sectoral coordination and strategic partnerships and said that 13 community safety forums had been assessed.

Ms Bilkis Omar, of the CSP, spoke to legislation and policy development.  She said the anti-gang strategy was not actually an anti-gang strategy but rather it was research on existing strategies being used against gangs.

Mr Luyanda Qhomfo of the CSP spoke to civilian oversight, monitoring and evaluation. Two evaluations on the DNA database and on the fingerprint aspect of the Act had commenced. The first phase of the information management system tool was completed.

Ms Millicent Kewute, Director: Monitoring and Evaluation at the CSP,  said they were evaluating the Criminal Procedures Amendment Act and looking at the design of DNA and fingerprint legislation and the Information Management System Tool.

Mr Kibiti Lipoto, CSP CFO, spoke to the quarterly expenditure breakdown. Expenditure for the first quarter stood at 18% of the total budget and should be approximately 25%.

Discussion

The Chairperson said it was not right that the presentation only looked at certain sections of the Act. The Committee wanted a full documented report on the implementation of all the clauses of the Act.

Ms M Molebatsi (ANC) said it was frustrating that the report was quiet on the real expenditure.

Ms D Kohler-Barnard (DA) said there were many gaps in the report and to continue would be a waste of time.

The Chairperson said that the CSP had to reappear with a full report and an action plan. On an oversight visit to a police station it was clear that there were problems of co-ordination. Was integrated policing operational or did it still need to be enacted?

Civilian Secretariat for Police: Assessing and monitoring the Police’s ability to handle complaints

Ms Kewute spoke to the readiness assessment of provincial secretariats, the complaints dialogue, the establishment of a complaints management reference group, the assessment of provincial inspectorate’s focus group discussions, the provincial inspectorate survey and the CSP complaints handling.

Discussion

Ms Molebatsi asked whether the developments regarding the complaints dialogue on the Domestic Violence Act (DVA) had yielded results. How were they tackling the vacuum mentioned in the presentation? It appeared, according to the presenter, that the monitoring function was not working as national office did not know what was happening in the provinces. She said the ill-discipline of IPID was very worrying and how was CSP intending to tackle it.

Ms L Mabija (ANC) asked for clarification of the first key finding in the presentation.

Ms Kohler Barnard asked if the report had been given to SAPS and what had been their response.

Mr Z Mbhele (DA) asked whether best practises in other organisations were reviewed regarding the systemic gaps found in SAPS service delivery complaints operations.

Ms M MMola, (ANC) asked for clarity on the Consultative Forum with IPID.

The Chairperson felt there could not be a vacuum because all service delivery complaints were referred to SAPS or to the CSP while the CSP had to monitor the performance of the police service. He felt the presenter was wrong, that there was no vacuum. It was the role of the CSP to monitor gaps.

Ms Kewute said the DVA dialogues were not on the complaints. CSP had finalised a manifesto looking at how SAPS was to address violence against women (VAW) at a local level. The CSP acknowledged that it was not only SAPS’ responsibility to reduce VAW, various other entities needed to also play a role and provinces should have provincial dialogues. The CSP had launched the manifesto in the Northern Cape Province and set up structures at the local level.

The CSP Act calls for the CSP to monitor and evaluate how SAPS was managing complaints and so look at systemic issues in the SAPS but the ACT did not call for the CSP to handle complaints and investigate complaints.

The Chairperson said that he would have thought that there would have been reports to the Minister regarding these gaps.

Ms Kohler Barnard asked why sources of complaints were from four provinces only. Why not from the other provinces? What was the total number of complaints and were the figures given reflecting a period of six or 12 months?

Ms Kewute said they had identified problem areas from the inspectorate’s reports that the CSP needed to investigate.

A member of the CSP delegation said the CSP had done a self-administered survey in all the provincial inspectorates. Section 15 of the IPID talked about the establishment of a consultative forum with the CSP to deal with a number of issues. The forum needed to meet on a quarterly basis but they were meeting monthly and this had been promoted at a provincial level also. He said there was SAPS buy in to resolving complaints and taking the complaints dialogue forward. During the complaints dialogue CSP had looked at how other departments handled the issue of complaints so as to introduce best practices.

Ms Kohler Barnard reiterated her previous question. How many complaints had been lodged and over what period of time?

Ms L Mabija (ANC) said the establishment of a complaints management forum was open ended with no time frame attached. When was it supposed to be established?

Mr M Tshishonga (AGANG SA) said the graph depicting complaints did not reflect the previous year’s figures to allow comparisons to be made to see if improvement was occurring. The level of complaints about poor investigations had to be worrying to public prosecutors. The graph did not also reflect complaints emanating from courts.

Ms MMola said the complaints on slide 11, like failure to follow up and lack of commitment, reflected that people were not doing their jobs. What was being done about this?

Mr D Twala (EFF) asked who sat on the reference group and what mechanism was there to control compliance to the DVA. It appeared SAPS did not know what the DVA entailed. He asked what the experience of interacting with the police was and how independent were the CSP?

The Chairperson said there was a need for a one stop shop. Nyanga CPF had submitted complaints but received no feedback. The Committee itself had sent some complaints to the police and in some instances there had been no response also.

Ms Fourie said the need for a one stop shop was necessary and the CSP was working towards an integrated management system.

Compliance currently was not optimal but there was engagement with SAPS to improve the compliance rate and to develop a Memorandum of Understanding with SAPS and IPID to be concluded by December.

She said the survey data was baseline data.

Ms Kewute said the numbers were in the reports which would be made available and they would include the timelines in the reports. Slide 9 was baseline information. It had to be taken into account that the Directorate looking into complaints had only being established in the past financial year.

They had not received complaints from the courts but there were plans to liaise with the courts.

Ms Ayanda Kona, a member of the CSP, said they had informed police stations where the challenges lay and made recommendations on corrective measures which were also sent to SAPS which in turn sent out national directives on improvements regarding DVA compliance measures.

The Chairperson said it was vital that the Committee received the full briefing and would call the National Commissioner, the Executive Director of IPID, the Department of Performance, Monitoring and Evaluation for a briefing. What was needed was a game plan that worked for the public. The Committee wanted a proper presentation on the DVA.

Provincial Commissioner’s presentation

The Chairperson said the Committee had gone to Nyanga after complaints and would be visiting Gauteng and Mpumalanga also. The issues at Nyanga were a shortage of detectives and staff, the rationale behind the dispersal of staff to specialised units and the N2 highway hotspot near Cape Town Airport. It had done a second visit and had been happy with the Philippi police station.

In addition to the issues mentioned above, the Provincial Police Commissioner, Lt General Arno Lamoer, spoke to the role of crime intelligence and the action plan to deal with the high number of shebeens (beer parlours) and drug use in the area.

Discussion

The Chairperson said he welcomed the 46 new posts for the new financial year.  Was there a national study to evaluate the flow of population as the Committee had felt that the Nyanga area had experienced a massive influx of people? Were there efforts to ensure a capable leadership of the Nyanga cluster who could deal with the Human Resource (HR) dynamics of the members and with the community? The station commander was the one who would be driving the efforts against crime.

 

Ms Molebatsi asked about the asset registry for the allocation of vehicles. What were the functions of the SAPS HR committee? What were the sick leave trends? Was one member sufficient for trio crimes? Were the Crime Intelligence Officers (CIO) for visible policing?

 

Ms Kohler Barnard said drug lords were sending children out as the distributors, as strategy. Was SAPS working with any other entities to find a solution? What were the successes against drug lords?

 

Mr Twala wanted to know what the docket to detective ratio was. Was there any proposed improvement on the e-docket system?

Ms Mabija said they noticed there were no CIOs at Nyanga and Phillipi police stations but there were Crime Intelligence Gatherers (CIG).

Mr Mbhele asked what the CIO acronym stood for. What was the Fixed Establishment (FE) at cluster level?

 

Ms Kohler Barnard said 10 032 cases were opened at the station with 4 096 closed as undetected. Was this poor ratio a reflection on the detectives and their calibre?

Commissioner Lamoer said input sheets were completed by every station annually at station level. All this information was correlated and sent to national who decided where there would be increases of staff. At provincial level quality checks on the information handed in was done.

Regarding leadership, he said the acting station commander was sick but was now back again. There was a problem with absenteeism at Nyanga station. The station was being seen as a dumping station so now more staff were being rotated in and out of the station. A new branch commander for detectives was moved there. He was currently on leave and indications were he would resign. The best method was to advertise the post and get people who wanted to be there. One of the problems was members had been stationed there for 20 years and were only reporting for duty. He wanted to improve members work at station level.

Regarding the number of vehicles at the station, he said there was a formula at national level that one vehicle per two detectives were allocated. That was how the vehicle ratio was determined. It was one to eight for crime prevention staff and one to twelve for support services staff. They were looking at how to better prioritise stations like Nyanga.

 

The HR committee looked at HR and the quality of people sent to Nyanga.

 

Regarding sick leave, he said that when a station commander picked up a tendency he had to submit a report. Members tried different strategies like going to different doctors to be booked off. Some leadership in Nyanga had already exhausted their sick leave.  

 

Regarding trio crimes, he said the one member was taken from the station to form part of a team at provincial level to deal with trio crimes. It was found with house robberies that when he syndicate people were arrested, the crime figures decreased.

 

The CIO belonged to operational support and looked at tendencies and trends. The CIG reported to crime intelligence provincially. Every station had to identify groups operating in their area.

Regarding Ms Kohler Barnard’s question on the use of children, he said they were working with schools but truancy was a problem. They have had discussions with the Department of Education. He said that after the bus burning the previous week in Nyanga, the problem had turned into one of children throwing stones at the police vehicles.

He said they have had successes against the drug labs in cooperation with the DPCI.

He said the public complaints that there was no feedback, of poor investigations, no responses from the police, which police officers were not at work, were correct and complaints were received on a regular basis.

Regarding the calibre of detective work, he said that since June, a plan to improve the investigation capacity in terms of how they investigate had been implemented.  They had found that when they deployed recruits as detectives immediately after training, it was too big a jump. They were pushing for those that had just graduated to investigate in a re-established uniform investigation branch to gain experience and then to recruit detectives from that pool. They would run a pilot project in eleven stations and submit the results to the national office to assist in improving poor investigations and would use senior detectives to help guide the new detectives.

Regarding docket investigations, he said detectives in Nyanga received approximately 18-25 new dockets per month. A detective could have 600 dockets but the majority of them were cold cases which he was the administrator of. Dockets per detectives were around 120-150, but a further breakdown of that figure still needed to be done.

The CIO was located at station level and reported to the station commander. The CIG was located at the cluster level and reported to provincial crimes intelligence. He confirmed that there was a shortage of CIG capacity at cluster level. He said he had allocated 50 members two and a half years ago because of the shortage.

Regarding unsolved cases, he said the issue was not only detectives but also that the major problem in investigations was the taking of the A1 (first) statement. Have started training on this matter.

He said feedback to complainants were in the police‘s own standing orders and no directive was necessary.

Ms Molebatsi asked about two unsolved cases of death in custody in 2011/12 at Nyanga station. Why were these not properly investigated by the IPID?

Ms MMola asked if FE was better than RAGS. She had heard on the oversight visit that quality staff had been removed from Nyanga and taken elsewhere. She said that there were no replacements for policemen who had been killed on duty at Nyanga.

Mr B Josephs (EFF) asked about the community safety plan.  He said there were certain guidelines on the establishment of a community safety plan from CPF level through local, cluster, Provincial and National levels. These plans had to be signed off and the CPF were not properly consulted. How would he ensure proper consultation?

Ms Molebatsi asked when Colonel Els would be replaced.

The Chairperson asked about the intelligence capability of the police to know beforehand about the bus burning incidents in Nyanga. What was the capability of the Western Cape to deal with public disorder and what interim steps could be taken?

Commissioner Lamoer said at station level dockets were scanned and then entered into computers. This scanning of documents was as a backup should dockets get lost or stolen. The e-docket system was a system where a case was tracked up to court. One should not confuse e-dockets with the scanning and uploading of dockets.

He said he could not give an answer on the two unsolved cases. IPID needed to explain. He acknowledged that feedback to the community needed to be improved.

He said the FE was the real figures while the RAG was the ideal figures.

Regarding quality staff leaving Nyanga, Commissioner Lamoer said if a member applied for promotion one could not stop them. Regarding removals of staff, he had issued instructions that only he could approve transfer moves.

In instances where policemen were killed, it took two years to fill the post unless someone voluntarily moved to the area. Some members have worked at one station for 28 years and that was another problem. The entry age into the police was 18 years and they became operational police officers only when they were 20/21 years.

Community safety operational plans had to be in consultation with communities and signed off by communities and he would ensure that that was complied with. The CPF did have a channel to raise these issues if there was no compliance. It was disturbing to hear that some CPFs were not consulted.

He said Col. Els has moved, a new colonel had been appointed but was on leave and wanted to resign. He could not replace the person without the colonel having put his resignations papers in.

Regarding public order, he said the province had 3 000 members that had been trained as first responders in crowd management. It was stretching the budget and resources as they were having an average of seven protest actions per day.

 The Chairperson asked when last the inspectorate had visited the Nyanga cluster police station. What was the impact on SAPS of the abuse of sick leave? The Committee wanted a report on the recruitment of new members.

 

Mr Twala said that since 2010 they had been trying to improve the quality of detective work. Has it been improving or not? He had asked about the e-dockets because he had heard of the purchase of laptops to track cases right up to court. This was in light of cases getting thrown out of court. How have these interventions like the laptops improved cases ending up in court?

 

The Chairperson asked about service delivery. He asked what game plan there was regarding complainants and feedback.

 

Ms Molebatsi asked how effective trauma debriefing was as she had found that only one referral had taken place and this might be contributing to the sick leave figures.

 

Mr Mbhele asked what the process was to report information to crime intelligence. 

 

Mr Martin Makasi, Secretary of the Nyanga CPF, said that if the crime intelligence of police was so good then they would have known of the (bus burning) actions which occurred in Nyanga beforehand. He said the previous Saturday there had been random shootings with firearms in full view of members of the deceased’s family at a funeral in Nyanga, giving the impression that hooligans were in control. This problem continued to the early hours of Sunday morning. The other frustrations were that the number of the FE differed to the number given by the station commander the previous day. Nyanga police had 128 members not 148.

 

Regarding having an increase of 10 detective posts, he said Nyanga still only had 56 to 59 personnel working there as confirmed that morning by the station commander. Since 2010 the station had lost 69 members through death, promotions, transfers and retirements and they had not been replaced. Either SAPS were not taking the CPF seriously or they were trying to cover themselves.

 

Regarding bad apples being deployed in Nyanga, they had found the station commander, a colonel busy with social networks at night or people were asleep. In one instance the colonel could not even be found.

 

Mr Sandile Martin, Chairperson of the Nyanga CPF, wanted to know which other areas were the same as Nyanga. He said the Browns Farm sector was larger than Langa yet Nyanga had no resources. Were detectives counselled? He noted that photographers were paid for overtime but not the detectives. How far was the case against a man who had run away after harassing a woman and stabbing her?

 

Mr Dumisani Qwebe, a member of the Nyanga CPF, said that the previous week a person had been shot. When the police were called, they replied that they had no petrol to come out.

 

Mr Mawetu Guja, Chairperson of the Nyanga Sector 3 CPF, asked when and where the satellite police station for Samora Machel area would be built. A satellite police station for Browns Farm had also been requested for many years. Was the language barrier looked into?

 

Ms Nomathembu Ngesi, member of the Nyanga CPF, asked why the station commander who had just been appointed was resigning. The CPF had asked for a six month intervention for Nyanga and to take police from police stations in areas of low crime to assist in Nyanga. To date no answer had been forthcoming.

 

Commissioner Lamoer said that when he mentioned that crime intelligence had improved, he had not referred to Nyanga but to the overall improvement.

 

Regarding the moving of human resources from one police station to another police station, one could not go over the establishment for a police station. Members were however sent for short periods.

 

He said the branch commander of detectives was resigning and in an exit interview he would give reasons for his resignation. Since April 416 members had resigned, possibly because of changes to pension fund rules and notwithstanding the fact that it had been explained that the changes would not impact their pension.

 

Language barriers were continuously addressed and there was not one station where only one language was spoken.

 

Regarding satellite police stations, he said as a province, they submitted their list of priorities to the national office. The satellite station for Samora Machel/Weltevreden had not been built because there was no land that had been identified. Province was not responsible for this identification as the land belonged to the city and there was an on-going process between the Department of Public Works and the city of Cape Town. Browns Farm was a similar case and was number 13 on the capital expenditure list. This was a process he had to follow.

 

Regarding the woman who had been stabbed, he said he wanted the details and would investigate the matter.

 

Photographers were paid overtime and overtime was available to detectives, but they had to apply and follow processes to claim them.

 

Regarding counselling, he said they did have employee health and welfare programs and initial debriefing had to take place on a continuous basis but that this was voluntary.

 

The numbers were different from the FE establishment because the FE had changed in June so were not aligned to the actual numbers currently.

 

Regarding the funeral incident, he said he needed to deal with this information.

 

He said the ‘year of detectives’ was resourced and they had received over 3 300 laptops but that these were not linked to the mainframe.

 

He said it was a standing order that complaints were to be assigned to an officer to deal with the complaint. The numbers were very high for the Western Cape in comparison to the rest of the country. Western Cape’s numbers were very high because the Western Cape was open and transparent so people came forward with complaints.

 

The incident where the shift commander was absent from his post would be followed up.

 

A divisional commissioner of the national inspectorate explained that a focussed inspection of the Nyanga police station had been undertaken, given that it was one of the stations prioritised by the provincial commissioner.

 

Ms Mabija pleaded with the commissioner to assist the Nyanga community. She said that saying that the land belonged to the city was not good enough. He had to negotiate with the city in a manner befitting an integrated service relationship.

 

Mr Twala supported Ms Mabija’s call.

 

Ms Molebatsi said that when they visited Nyanga and Phillipi and wanted to know about ABLs, they were told these were monitored at cluster level. How could a commander exercise command and control when ABLs were monitored elsewhere.

 

Regarding recruitment, Commissioner Lamoer said they followed a process.  668 posts had been allocated to the province and 554 were to go for training. Only three issues were raised through the application process, two of which were resolved and in the third case the applicant was not successful.

 

Regarding ABLs, he said monitoring took place at cluster level but this was in cooperation with the station commander. All new vehicles would not have ABLs.

 

He agreed on the issue of the Nyanga community’s call for a satellite station and would raise the matter at the next quarterly meeting with the mayor and do planning to assist the community. He would do another plan in the interim while government processes took its course.

 

The meeting was adjourned.