Community Safety

The South African Police Services informed me as follows:

9. (1)  2015/2016        -   1036

2016/2017        -   416

2017/2018        -   481

2018/2019        -   484

2019/2020        -   462

The Department informed me as follows:

         (2)   The Department of Community Safety does not provide any gender-based violence sensitisation training to SAPS officers. The Department would like to support the SAPS to facilitate further training to frontline members at the SAPS Community Service Centres at stations with a low level of compliance to the Domestic Violence Act.

The South African Police Services informed me as follows:

(3)  (a)  None

       (b)  Not applicable

The Western Cape Police Ombudsman informed me as follows:

Background:

In order for the Western Cape Police Ombudsman to provide a response, it is pertinent to understand what the Victim Empowerment Program or VEP entails.  The South African Police Service (SAPS) renders Victim Empowerment Services as often, it serves as the first point of entry, when people fall victim to crime.  In many cases, they are the first responders, and are therefore required to ensure that victims of crime are provided with a victim centric and victim friendly service.  More so, in the case of serious and violent crime. The VEP is therefore in place to ensure that the rights of victims are protected, and that the victim is not subjected to secondary trauma.

When considering issues related to misconduct and/or poor performance in terms of National Instruction 2 of 2012, it is important to distinguish between general administrative complaints against the Service and individual complaints registered against SAPS-members.   Where the former concerns the   often failure of a station to have certain infrastructure in its victim friendly rooms; the latter looks at the conduct of the individual member/s.  It’s important to note that all members of the SAPS are sensitized to the prescripts of National Instruction 2 of 2012 hence there is no specific unit or entity responsible for the carrying out of the functions and obligations of the VEP. 

Section 1 of National Instruction 2 of 2012 states that “an effective, victim-friendly service means that the Service must provide a professional, accessible and sensitive service to the victims of crime and violence when they report it, and also during the investigation thereof.”  This thus confirms that all members of the Service are responsible for the effective implementation of the aforementioned Instruction. On this basis the only distinction drawn by our office is that of complaints concerning matters dealt with by SAPS’ Family Violence, Child Protection and Sexual Offences (FCS) Units and other non-unit specific complaints.

Our statistics below are testament to the overall amount of complaints of policing inefficiency received without specification to complaints handled by a particular unit. The below table contains the status of complaints.