The mother of a dead child has given Viewfinder access to the tapes of a disciplinary hearing of the police officer accused of killing her son. The officer was found not guilty, though the police watchdog had concluded he had a case of “murder” and “misconduct” to answer. The tapes reveal the inner workings of South African Police Service (SAPS) hearings, from which brutality accused officers routinely emerge unpunished, and from which even the police watchdog is excluded.
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Every year, police in South Africa kill hundreds of people and are accused of brutalising thousands more. A new investigation by Viewfinder has revealed that the killings and brutality are enabled by police management’s reluctance to discipline officers accused of wrongdoing in these cases. This is true even when watchdog investigations conclude that these officers
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Policemen have been accused of nearly 1,000 rapes since 2012. Many of these suspects stand accused of abusing the authority of their positions to aid them in these crimes, a new investigation by Viewfinder has found. Yet, police management rarely disciplines or dismisses the officers involved. On the afternoon of 6 June 2014, 36-year-old Ermelo
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Police arrest a protester at the Siqalo informal settlement near Mitchells Plain, Cape Town. (Photo: Ashraf Hendricks / GroundUp) Police commanders will be empowered to overrule watchdog findings against their colleagues when a new agreement between the South African Police Service (SAPS) and the Independent Police Investigative Directorate (IPID) takes effect. The draft agreement was
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A South African Police Service (SAPS) no entry ribbon. (Photo: Ashraf Hendricks) People killed while fleeing, while brandishing knives or when officers fire “warning” shots – these are some of the circumstances of killings by police examined in a new study on the use of lethal force by the South African Police Service (SAPS). International
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The mother of a dead child has given Viewfinder access to the tapes of a disciplinary hearing of the police officer accused of killing her son. The officer was found not guilty, though the police watchdog had concluded he had a case of “murder” and “misconduct” to answer. The tapes reveal the inner workings of
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On a Friday evening in December 2013, at the start of the school holidays, 15-year-old Damian Ahrendse was shot and killed near his mother’s house in Wesbank, on the Cape Flats. Witnesses say that a police officer pulled the trigger. An autopsy report concluded that Damian had been shot in the back. Yet, the policeman
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On 1 April 2020, Ishmael Gama was reportedly tortured and killed by police officers in Lenasia, south of Johannesburg. More than a year after his death, and months after the police watchdog implicated eight officers in murder, police management has not acted. But, this is not an unusual scenario. A new Viewfinder analysis of police
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