Durban — As KwaZulu-Natal Premier Thami Ntuli ups the ante on crime-fighting, he has ordered the law enforcement agencies in the province to “fight fire with fire” when they square off with criminals.
“We quite support the aggressive approach to crime because even the criminals are aggressive. We are losing many lives, many people are killed every day. Even the police are not safe.
“When they try to approach the criminals and arrest them, they shoot at the police.
“And for them (the police) not to respond to fire with fire, I don’t think this will enable us to arrest the issues of crime in the province,” said Ntuli.
He made these utterances on the sidelines of the Social Crime Prevention Summit at the Olive Convention Centre in Durban on Friday.
The summit was held amid surging crime, which has seen the police in gunfights on many occasions with suspected criminals in the crime-infested KZN province. Unofficial statistics put the number of suspected criminals killed for July alone at 20.
Ntuli vowed that the province would tighten its crime-busting initiatives as it rounded up criminals.
He said the rampant crime in the province weakened investor confidence, and he urged all citizens to join in the fight against it.
Provincial commissioner Lieutenant-General Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi, who was also part of the summit, came out guns blazing against experts.
“There are so-called experts. You become an expert on something if you have done it before, not when you learn and study. But when you have done it practically. You have got the knowledge and practical experience of it, then you (can) claim to be an expert.”
He added: “It is those people (experts) that want to analyse that when you are in a gunfight as police, you must be killed, and not the criminal. So when a criminal is killed by you as a police officer, you are the wrong one. They are quick to judge.”
Mkhwanazi, however, stressed that they always encourage the police to act within the law.
“We always encourage members to operate within the confines of the law. You respect human rights, and we treat everyone with respect. That is why there are so many criminals in prison,” Mkhwanazi said.
When Ntuli took the reigns as premier in June, he swiftly incorporated the Community Safety and Liaison Department into his office as he wanted to closely monitor the department’s work in tackling crime in the province.
Meanwhile, a newly enacted law paved the way for the police watchdog, the Independent Police Investigative Directorate (Ipid), to “investigate serious alleged offences committed by police officers, whether they were off-duty or not”.
Ipid spokesperson Phaladi Shuping was quoted by the Sunday Tribune, sister publication of the Daily News, as saying: “We do not have statistics (of suspects killed by police in gunfire) but we have been involved, in terms of investigations, in several cases where the police allegedly shot at suspected criminals.”
The chairperson of Parliament’s portfolio committee on police, Ian Cameron, also raised the issue of police killings in KZN, saying that they operated in a dangerous environment.
“In this context, police should be enabled to use reasonable force necessary in self-defence.”
Outspoken violence monitor and author Mary de Haas said: “There are times when the police need to defend themselves, but I know from many years and incidents where I have seen forensic evidence that they also lie and people are shot in cold blood.
“This is not solving crime because the people who are shot are probably fronts for the crime.”
De Haas said it was “unconstitutional” for police to shoot to kill instead of arresting suspects so that they could use them to investigate crime syndicates.
“Police are supposed to track criminal activities before guns are used,” she said.
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