Viewfinder’s Police Accountability Tracker is an interface to the Independent Police Investigative Directorate's (IPID) database of more than 47,000 complaints registered against the police between April 2012 and March 2020. Users can use the filters to home in on any police station for an overview of cases registered there. Users can also locate any individual case for a "progress report", as at March 2020. The data demonstrates that police officers implicated in violent crimes routinely escape accountability.
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A tiny grave in the Klip Road Cemetery in Grassy Park outside Cape Town marks the failure of a system that was set up with the express purpose of detecting and preventing child abuse. So, has the country’s early warning system for child abuse broken down? In a powerful and in-depth investigation by journalism watchdog
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This month marks 10 years since the massacre at Marikana, where police shot and killed 34 striking miners. Despite the findings of an independent inquiry, no one within the police has been held accountable. Yet, evidence suggests police abuses didn’t end on the day of the shooting. In the weeks after the massacre, scores of
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Are you a mid-career journalist who wants to take your reporting on topical, public interest issues in South Africa to new heights? Viewfinder is offering a fellowship for reporters to investigate and then produce impact-driven journalism on accountability failures in the country. We are particularly interested in exposing abuses of power or inexcusable failures by
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The South African Police Service (SAPS) has found Athlone station commander Colonel Mark Adonis guilty of misconduct for failing to act on torture and murder allegations against officers on his staff. He was given a “verbal warning”, according to former police commissioner General Khehla Sitole, who was responding to a parliamentary question. A conviction of
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Police brutality – including allegations of torture – has been exposed in several Carte Blanche exposés in recent months. Now, a police insider breaks through the ‘blue wall of silence’, detailing the habitual brutality and non-accountability at their police station. “It takes someone that is evil to do what was done that night”, the whistle-blower
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In January 2020, the army and police barged into Wasiela Isaacs’ family home in Athlone on the Cape Flats and arrested her son, Adam. Days later, he died in hospital from blunt force trauma injuries. Two years on, as the Isaacs family awaits justice, a Viewfinder and Carte Blanche investigation has revealed that one of
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After sustained criticism in Parliament this year, the South African Police Service (SAPS) has issued a circular to call out its commanders for their “inaction” and “reluctance” when officers under their command are implicated in serious crimes. Issued on 8 October, the circular warns that police supervisors who fail to act “promptly” in such cases
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Daneel Knoetze delivering @viewfinderjourn’s workshop on accountability journalism in Cape Town this morning.
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