Eleven Easy and Cheap Steps to
Greater Police Effectiveness and Morale

Wilfried Schärf
Associate Professor, Director
14 October 1997
  

IT has amazed me that the levels of obvious inefficiency have been allowed to continue more than three and a half years after the national election. This set of recommendations is based mainly on the experiences of the Western Cape, and more particularly the greater Cape Town area. I believe that remedying the following inefficiencies will go some way towards better policing.

At this point in time there is no responsiveness at any station in the Western Cape to varying work-loads. Every idiot knows that the highest demand for police services (visible and detective) are on Friday and Saturday nights, yet those are the times at which the stations have the fewest staff on duty, and the lowest level of commanders/managers. I understand that the blockage to changing that pattern is the reluctance of officers to work on weekends and change their social patterns.

The result is that far more crime takes place on weekends than if there were adequate police available on weekends. The processing of cases, their investigation suffers from the time-lag (quality of evidence deteriorates), which compounds the case-loads in a vicious cycle, lower conviction-rates is the result. Community anger impacts on preparedness to co-operate. Increases community willingness to take the law into their own hands.

If my information is correct, then at no police station in the greater Cape Town are there routine information exchanges during shift changes. Why not, and what is the damage to efficiency and effectiveness, the community relations and service delivery?

1. CIMC Research in the Western Cape revealed that roughly 75% of all fatalities are alcohol related and occur at or within short distances from drinking venues (Shebeens, etc.). If there is such a close relationship between alcohol and violent crime, patrols or on-duty officers should be placed at or near such venues as a deterrent so that the police response is not reactive. Liquor sellers should be "responsibilised" by being required have safety personnel in and around the drinking venue, and to have the task of working closely with the police. International evidence from a comparison of more than 50 countries suggests that preventive efforts are between four and seventy times cheaper than reactive efforts.
     

2. Based on the same logic, if there is a suspicion that there is something going on at a particular house, or a particular individual or group is looking as if there could be a criminal outcome, then these groups or individuals should be investigated pre-emptively, rather than waiting for complaints or reported crime.

All detectives claim that the work-loads are too onerous. They are undoubtedly very high, but if the Nyanga workshop is anything to go by 70% of the obstacles to their greater efficiency can be overcome by themselves together with the station management - they began to own their problems rather than blame others for them; this could be done within 3 months
without any major further resources. The other 30% required Provincial or National Policy changes or resource inputs.

Vehicles are generally being crashed and misused at an unacceptably high rate. Maintenance and repairs take exceptionally long during which detectives claim they cannot do their work effectively. Typical pool-car syndrome exacerbated by poor morale, competition over vehicles and a hierarchy of access to vehicles because some staff had not yet obtained drivers’ licences. Again at the Nyanga workshop when the vehicle issue was looked at the problems of drivers licences on the part of African police staff became apparent. But the issue was seen to be inextricably linked to policing a black township: Afrikaans first-language speaking detectives who had drivers licences could not take good statements from Xhosa speaking community members. Xhosa-speaking detectives had no drivers licences but could help get good statements. Racial/cultural tensions, and the manner in which brownie points are scored for dockets discouraged co-operation.

The resolution was to work in teams of two so that linguistic diversity and vehicular access were solved simultaneously. Dedicating vehicles to no more than 6 detectives increased the potential for a more responsible management of them and reduced the pool-car syndrome. Dealing with the slow through-put at maintenance and repair shops needed Provincial or National intervention.

A perceived problem was deep cultural and racial hostility and suspicion. More closely examined much of the animosity stemmed from a misunderstanding of the different customs and beliefs. The result was unwillingness to work together, reluctance to share information, exclusive cliques to be formed which continuously discredited the other. Poor morale and efficiency.

Pairing the detectives from different linguistic and cultural backgrounds in one vehicle helped deal with the language problem. But they were also asked to use the opportunity to talk about each other’s families, cultures and customs, as well as teach each other their respective languages. Further interventions in the form of diversity training could also help.

1. While most stations have management meetings on which all structures are represented, those representatives don’t report back at all or when they do, it is inadequate.
     

2. Policy changes do not get communicated to ground level police in a way that enables them to feel part of the changes happening around them Usually they have no part in the formulation of the policy. They are given no adequate means and process through which they can buy into the new policies. They consequently feel left out, inadequately equipped to act in the new era, yet criticised for not doing their job correctly. They feel doubly betrayed: firstly by their old political, leaders for not taking responsibility for what the police were explicitly and implicitly expected to do; and secondly betrayed by the new order for expecting them to do their job without equipping them with the skills with which to do it. Anger festers, they become prone to corruption and a couldn’t-care-less approach to their job, the community.

At this stage of the transformation of the SAPS it is not too late to spend far more time than is spent at the moment in setting up better internal communication systems and procedures as well as discussion sessions about the new policies. Many stations do not have a common-room or tea room for routine interaction in a slightly more relaxed atmosphere.

There should be flexibility in the docket accreditation system, so that team-work can be accredited to both detectives rather than only the registered investigating officer. Shortage of vehicles, cultural tensions and misunderstandings, unequal distribution of driver’s licences could all be helped by accrediting solved cases to two detectives in a manner that creates incentives for, rather than deterrents to working together.

The most effective means of dealing with police corruption is NOT the prosecution route on its own. Investigating and prosecuting corrupt cops must happen but by FAR the most effective manner of getting rid of corruption is managing-out corruption. A policeman or woman who feels respected, needed, acknowledged for good achievements and helped to overcome the mistakes s/he has made, who is well-remunerated, well-informed about policy, who knows that corruption will not be condoned wither by superiors or colleagues and that s/he will lose all her/his friends if discovered as corrupt, whose stress is taken seriously and something is done about the stress, whose threats to her/his family by criminals are acknowledged, and systems put into place to protect the family, is much less prone to corruption than those who feel the opposite. Managers ought to be equipped to be more sensitive to the needs of staff, and a whole package of management skills and systems introduced.

An experiment in Nyanga is showing promise. It is the old tried and tested sector policing idea, where part of a town, suburb, or township is dedicated to particular cops (3 per 24 hours). They get to know the people, the anti-crime initiatives, the patterns, and the places where trouble can be expected. The increased familiarity with the community generates better co-operation, better information, better early warning systems, and the community anti-crime organisations perform many of the preventative tasks for the police. It usually results in far lower crime levels.

Poor residential areas which have historically had poor policing service from the SAP, have usually developed a form of civilian policing whether it was in the form of neighbourhood watches (not the peering through lace curtains variety in affluent areas!), street committees, anti crime committees (Eastern Cape), amasolomzi, Makgotla, peacekeepers, or whatever else they are called. At times these groupings took on a political flavour in the form of Self-Defence Units, self-protection units, task forces.

These structures only exist nowadays because they perceive the state not to be protecting the people in their constituency. Police MUST be encouraged to work closely with them. The result will be very dramatic and positive. Mitchell’s Plain police station has tried it recently and it is promising to be a big success. They can’t understand why they haven’t done it years ago. The more these structures can be tied into a common understanding and practise, the more responsible they become and the better the crime prevention and investigations become. The greater Cape Town area has conservatively estimated 2,000 active Neighbourhood Watch members, 2,000 street committee members, 150 SDUs and anti-crime forum members in more than 20 townships and suburbs. The added support that these structures can provide to the police is invaluable. These people are all volunteers. Many of them are police reservists. They should be supported with training to make them more aware of due process and better communication/co-operation with the police and among each other. They should be encouraged to register, sign codes of conduct, and their leaders should, as in the rules relating to marches and demonstrations, be locked into taking responsibility for the good conduct of their members, the ‘new’ responsibilisation approach to crime prevention and public order.

PS: There are several other obvious changes that need to be introduced but I understand that they are already enjoying attention. To name but a few:

1. Geographic pattern analysis (promised in the 97/2 quarterly report for end November 1997);
     

2. Uniform branch personnel trained to take quality statements: To date a uniform branch team arrives at the scene of the crime, takes down names and addresses and tries to identify a crime and then says the detectives will come on Monday. Uniform branch will be trained to take quality statements to avoid duplication and improve the service delivery to the public.
     

3. Securing a crime scene: Gradually being taken more seriously as a greater emphasis on forensic evidence becomes more entrenched, and forensic services are considered to be quite good in the Western Cape.

PPS: The process of senior staff members taking packages, only to be vacating their offices in 1999 seems to be back-firing. There are only a few exceptions to this generalisation. They were originally kept in their positions for fear of a loss of capacity, but that, generally speaking, seems not to have happened. The loss of capacity has already occurred as many of these senior officers have ‘switched off’, are already running consultancies on the side, are not taking any initiative, and are demoralising the rest of the SAPS by encouraging them to join them in new business ventures. The hoped-for skills-transfer by these officers does not seem to be happening as originally envisaged. It is recommended that they be encouraged to leave earlier rather than later.