Remove bad and rotten officers

Pastor Paul Phillips, Voice of Parkwood

It is with great concern and frustration that the latest developments at the Grassy Park Police Station are noted (“CPF calls for inquiry into police”, Southern Mail, Wednesday, November 9).

As a key stakeholder in the social cohesion and social structure of our communities, community safety and policing is the gel that holds sustainable development together. If the gel (SAPS) has lost its purpose, we see the systematic dismantling of the aforementioned structure.

If the constitutional mandate of SAPS is not in effect in our community, we open the door to the forces of darkness, dysfunctionality and ineffectiveness in basic service delivery, the breakdown of community relations with government and so the list goes on.

When staff allege corruption; and manipulation of stats and workplace victimisation, racism and dictatorship, threats of wanting to shoot the commanding officer, it’s time for real and genuine intervention before it’s to late.

However, it must be stressed that the current commanding officer is doing his utmost best to fulfill his mandate. He has inherited a dysfunctional and rotten to the core police structure at Grassy Park, so when the broom wants to really sweep clean, the expected outcome in such a situation is to be expected.

We have on record previous request to provincial SAPS structures requesting intervention, meetings where aforementioned issues were raised, but to date, no positive outcomes materialised.

It would be totally unfair to point the finger at the commanding officer at the station, whereas senior structures took a backseat and allowed the situation to progress to boiling point.

The CPF is now calling a judicial commission of Inquiry into all these allegations, a call the community made a long time back. We support such a call, but the boundaries must extend way beyond just the Grassy Park station, it must include the operations of the CPF itself; a provincial heads and responsible senior officers who did nothing; and the politicising of, specifically, the Parkwood sector and subsequent results.

Members of the community should come to the fore with information on corrupt officers, illegal activities and transactions involving SAPS members and voice their dissatisfaction on the ever increasing levels of crime and gangster activity, which is evidently higher since the outburst at the station.

We cannot allow the situation to progress any further. We, as the community, are the affected party. We say stop with ineffective imbizos and holding meetings seen only as talk shops in our community, let’s take off the blinkers and recognise the real issue, which is the cancer of dysfuctionality at Grassy Park SAPS due to a lack of real and genuine intervention.

We are calling on the premier to seriously consider the appointment of such a commision. It is long overdue. It is time to permanently remove the bad and rotten officers from our midst. To those faithful and dedicated officers we say, we appreciate and value your service to our community.