Irregular expenditure in police soars by 350%, Parliament hears

12 Oct 2022

Detectives are meant to investigate crimes and contribute to successful prosecutions, but Parliament has heard this is the ‘worst performing’ division in the police. On top of this, irregular expenditure in the SA Police Service has increased by 352%.

A presentation on the country’s police and their performance has not inspired much confidence in the service, which for many years has been riven by infighting and corruption.

While some police and Hawks successes were discussed in Parliament during a police committee meeting on Wednesday, several worrying aspects of the South African Police Service (SAPS) came under the spotlight.

Over the years, the SAPS has been dogged by infighting and claims that dodgy cops are acting against clean colleagues.

Read more in Daily Maverick: “Spree of arrests of top cops exposes the depth of the rot alleged in SAPS’s Crime Intelligence”

‘Shortage of warm bodies’

During a SAPS presentation, which mainly dealt with the police’s performance between 1 April 2021 and 31 March 2022, Police Minister Bheki Cele addressed several issues, including that of overworked cops.

Read more in Daily Maverick: “ ‘A catastrophe’ — Minister Bheki Cele describes shocking work conditions for SA police”

He said that in 2010, the police service had about 196,000 members. Today, that figure stands at an estimated 175,000 — despite growth in the general population.

Cele said on Wednesday that the pandemic had affected the SAPS, including the training and recruiting of members, adding that not all policing units could recruit “new blood.”

“The shortage of warm bodies in this organisation is a budgetary matter,” he said.

Irregular expenditure increase

According to the police presentation, titled “SAPS annual report, predetermined objectives 2021/2022”, over the financial year ending in March 2022, a total of 86 confirmed irregular expenditure incidents had been recorded — this was a 352% increase from the 19 incidents recorded in the previous financial year.

“The increase is due to long outstanding cases that were finalised and confirmed after thorough consultation and intervention with end-users, and not due to new cases,” the presentation said.

Fruitless and wasteful expenditure incidents increased by 191%, with 105 incidents recorded in 2021/2022, up from 36 recorded in the previous year.

“Of the 105 cases, the majority were interest payments for claims against the State, and penalties on licence fees were incurred by provinces and divisions,” the presentation said. “However, an amount of R285,745 was recovered.”

During Wednesday’s meeting, Parliament heard that the police’s detective service was not up to scratch.

‘Worst performing’

“The worst performing programme was the Detective Service Programme, with a total number of 29 performance targets and an achievement rate of 51.7%,” the presentation said.

“Underperformance was recorded on the detection rates, organised crime, including the reduction of drug syndicates and organised criminal groups and gangs, the percentage of result of trial updated in respect of guilty and not guilty verdicts, the generation of previous conviction reports and all forensic evidence-related targets.”

During the meeting, the DA’s Andrew Whitfield pointed out that the number of detectives in the police kept declining and that there was a “clear and very obvious crisis” in the detective services programme.

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He said that “the number of case dockets on the desks of our detectives is increasing”.

“It appears that we’ve lost at least one detective a day over the last three years,” Whitfield added.

Another issue of concern was the number of police firearms that were reported as lost or stolen. In the 2021/2022 period, 712 losses and thefts were reported, higher than the set target of 508.

“This was due to the escalation of crime against members, including, but not limited to, robbery in townships, housebreaking, theft from dwellings, as well as negligence by members,” the police presentation said.

DNA setback

Another policing problem related to “biology DNA intelligence case exhibits”.

Of 253,428 entries, only 22,224 — or 8.7% — were finalised. Parliament heard that this meant the “set target of 80% processed within 90 calendar days” was not achieved.

Read more in Daily Maverick: “Police DNA testing failures an insult to GBV survivors and victims of crime — but the system can be fixed”

Included among the reasons for the underperformance, according to the presentation, was that an administration system was “not configured to process case files, in bulk”.

Another system “was not functional to print a statistical report, for five days”.

The police’s presentation said that for two months, there had also been a lack of “spin columns” that were used to process semen samples in gender-based violence and femicide cases.

‘Lived experience’ overlooked

Wednesday’s meeting included a presentation from the Auditor-General.

A part of this presentation — on the SAPS’ “enhanced processing of forensic evidence case exhibits” — found that the Auditor-General “could not confirm that the department enhanced the processing of forensic evidence”.

This was because the “department achieved 0% (0 out of 5) of its set targets”.

The Auditor-General presentation found that the SAPS measured the number of days it took to finalise a sample from the point that officials captured evidence data in a forensic scientific laboratories system.

“This type of measuring does not take into account the time the samples are collected from the victims or suspects to the time they are submitted for lab processing,” it said.

“Due to the full cycle not being tracked by its performance measure, the information the department report[s] on seems to be incomplete and not the full cycle of the process, therefore not talking to the lived experience by citizens.”

The Auditor-General presentation also said it did not seem as if the police had a plan on how to deal with forensic evidence non-achievements.

“If the real root causes for achievement and non-achievement are not identified and addressed, the department could be focusing on plans that will not assist them to achieve their key mandate,” the presentation said.

Drug busts and Hawks’ successes

In terms of drug smuggling, the police presentation said it managed to neutralise four of 11 identified syndicates, which equated to 32.3% of such syndicates, and arrested 10 suspects.

Two out of 10 identified organised criminal groups were also neutralised and 11 suspects arrested.

This meant the police’s set target of 60% was not achieved.

“The underperformance was mainly attributed to the under-capacitation of units and the inadequate development of members within the organised crime environment,” the presentation said.

Meanwhile, the Hawks appeared to be making inroads in crime fighting, and several individuals present during Wednesday’s police committee meeting congratulated them.

Read more in Daily Maverick: “Criminal cases involving R1.5-trillion — Hawks take stock under Godfrey Lebeya’s watch”

A Hawks presentation said 2,809 arrests had been carried out over the 2021/2022 financial year — an increase of 556 arrests compared with the previous year.

“Convictions amounting to 296,166 charges were secured in court for the 2021/2022 financial year,” the presentation said.

Quantities of narcotics, including cocaine worth more than R1.7-billion, were also seized during the year.

Thirty arrests were made in connection with the seized cocaine. DM

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