How cops fiddle crime statistics

Police in South Africa’s three major provinces are implicated in a conspiracy to make it appear that they are winning the war on crime.

Evidence of manipulating crime statistics — including destroying dockets and failing to register cases — has been exposed in Gauteng, Western Cape and KwaZulu-Natal.

At least five stations in the Western Cape, four in Gauteng and one in KwaZulu-Natal have been fingered in alleged fiddling and indications are that the fraud could be far more widespread.

In the past few weeks, police stations have been accused of:

• Stockpiling, hiding and burning dockets;
  
  
• Ditching dockets of crimes on the increase, including child rape;
  
  
• Failing to register crimes that have a low chance of prosecution; and
  
  
• Reducing serious crimes to lesser charges.
  

Four senior officers in Cape Town have been implicated in fiddling crime statistics, while Western Cape Community Safety MEC Lennit Max — embroiled in a war of words over the issue with his commissioner Mzwandile Petros — has claimed that the fudging of crime numbers is “common”.

The Sunday Times was also shown photocopies this week of about 200 unregistered dockets allegedly stashed in a KwaZulu-Natal police station.

Mulaudzi Hangwani, the spokesman for minister of police Nathi Mthethwa, said the stations under investigation made up “zero” percent of the country’s 1500 police stations.

The Independent Complaints Commission confirmed this week that six stations were under investigation.

This excludes Gauteng, where researcher Lisa Vetten from the Tshwaranang Legal Advocacy Centre also claims there is fiddling.

Vetten said Family Violence, Child Protection and Sexual Offences Unit (FCS) officers handling rape at more than four police stations in Gauteng had reported in a recent study that statistics manipulation was “definitely” happening.

“It is making some police officers very uncomfortable, ” Vetten said.

Pietermaritzburg’s Mountain Rise police station is under investigation by the Independent Complaints Directorate for allegedly stockpiling and destroying dockets, after it jumped from 40th position to the province’s top-performing station in a year.

The 200 unregistered dockets seen by the Sunday Times are alleged to have been stockpiled in a room at this station since 2007.

Meanwhile, Max said this week that his calls for an audit of all 147 Western Cape police stations were being ignored. He claims that rape cases involving children as young as five were not registered or investigated.

Vetten said the decision in 2004 to reduce crimes like rape by 7% to 10% every year had most likely put pressure on police as it not in “the realm of possibility”.

Policeman Craig Josiah from Mountain Rise station, who was suspended after blowing the whistle on the manipulation of figures, has had his pay reinstated and disciplinary charges put on hold pending finalisation of a court application to have his suspension overturned.