City welcomes IPID oversight of Law Enforcement
06 September 2020
Statement by the City's Mayoral Committee Member for Safety and Security, Alderman JP Smith
The City of Cape Town has welcomed the amendment of the Independent Police Investigative Directorate (IPID) Act which will include oversight of its Law Enforcement Department. It is an amendment the City has requested for years. Read more below:
The City is pleased that the Police Committee is finally acknowledging the City's ongoing request to be included under IPID oversight.
As in our presentation, the lack of IPID oversight over Law Enforcement lies in the hands of national government – only national government can change the legislation – and we have repeatedly asked for the legislation to include Law Enforcement (LE).
There are many municipalities across the country with Law Enforcement staff and they are all in the same situation and without IPID oversight.
The National Portfolio Committee has not ‘advised’ anything. At the end of the meeting the chair read out what was clearly a predetermined ‘resolution’ by the ANC that they wanted Law Enforcement included within Metro Police so that they would be subject to IPID.
Our response to this is clear:
1. LE functions effectively without having to resort under the Metro Police. Any attempt to force them under metro police is not done with the safety of our residents in mind, but rather with the political objectives of a party that has failed to improve safety for our residents for years
2. they have no power to compel the City to do so and
3. they should rather amend the IPID Act as suggested years ago
4. the true reason they wanted to incorporate Law Enforcement under Metro Police was so that they could attempt to hijack both at the same time when the single police service amendments to the Police Services Act happens over the next 12 months
Instead of focusing on fixing what isn’t working in the SAPS they instead want to fiddle with areas that don’t need their input.
As for amending the IPID act to include Law Enforcement as one of the agencies IPID has oversight over, this has been a repeated request from the City for years.
Failure to do so is entirely in their hands.
Law Enforcement is subject to more oversight than SAPS with six oversight entities.
The City of Cape Town has emphasised repeatedly, that every Law Enforcement officer has a competency certificate.
It is the SAPS provincial commissioner who issues these certificates and it is therefore unclear why these are being requested from the City. SAPS only need to check their records.
However, since it appears that SAPS either fails to keep record or has forgotten where they keep the certificates they issue, the City will issue SAPS with copies of these certificates in the upcoming week.
There is an excellent working relationship between the City and SAPS at a grassroots level, with SAPS regularly calling on us to assist in operations, doing joint planning interventions and commenting that they would not be able to do their work without the City.
However, the working relationship does become strained when one sees political interference such as that by the National Minister who asked SAPS to prohibit City enforcement services from attending their planning meetings.
Joint planning was impossible for the first three weeks of the spate of land invasions that started in July which strained the relationship until the provincial government intervened to fix the problem.
The City has put forward a request to the Police Portfolio Committee to increase the public order policing units in the City of Cape Town since there are only four units in the entire province. This compares unfairly with other provinces who enjoy greater POPs with far less need for them.
End
Published by:
City of Cape Town, Media Office
