Scandal of the missing dockets

Police officers lost 671 criminal dockets last year - in police stations. Now experts are pointing fingers at corrupt cops, saying this is the only explanation for a 1 500 percent spike in lost dockets in North West alone.

Police Minister Nathi Mthethwa is incensed and has ordered a high-level probe into the scandal. So far, five police officers have been disciplined and fired for corruption.

In the 2007/08 reporting period, police lost 427 dockets, Mthethwa said, responding to a question in Parliament.

North West alone accounts for more that 40 percent of all the lost dockets in 2007/08 - with 260 being reported as missing. The year before, the province's police lost 17 dockets.

KwaZulu-Natal takes the second spot, losing 275 dockets in the past three years. The figures for Gauteng showed that 182 dockets were reported missing in the past three years.

The Western Cape was the only province to improve. From losing 139 dockets in the past two financial years, it managed not to lose a single one between April and September this year.

The best-performing province is Mpumalanga. Police personnel there lost six dockets in 2007, one last year and none this year.

In the past seven months, 152 dockets were lost in police stations across the country. More than half in North West.

North West's Community Policing Forum board chairman Leonard Brown blames the provincial commissioner, Lesetja Beetha. "Our provincial management is very poor. The buck stops with the provincial commissioner.

"Everything that goes wrong in the province, he is aware of. But to be aware and doing something about it are two different things.

"Our police are sometimes very innocent but management is failing them," said Brown.

A crime expert has blamed poor management in the province, arguing that corruption, negligence and work overload were the main causes.

Johan Burger of the Institute for Security Studies said poor "command and control" at police stations and a lack of discipline were behind the losses.

"A number of cases are sold or destroyed because of corruption. In some cases, the investigators are over-laden with case dockets and can't deal with the workload."

At the heart of the problem was the lack of leadership within the police, Burger said.

"Where there is command and control, there is regular inspection of case dockets by the station commander... where they disappear, it shows this is not carried out," he said.

Historically, provinces like North West and Limpopo experienced low levels of crime, but recent trends, said Burger, showed a spike in violent crime in these provinces.

While Burger could not explain the sudden rise in certain types of crime, it could be a factor in increasing the workload for the police.

"There are more case dockets, and some of these crime syndicates may want to bribe police to make the dockets disappear," said Burger.

Provincial commissioners did not escape criticism.

"This shows that command and control is lacking here. The provincial commissioners have an internal inspectorate. They must use the inspectorate to go and determine, first, how big the problem is and then determine why it is happening and who is responsible.

If anyone is found to have been corrupted, they should be charged," Burger added.