Faizel Patel, Radio Islam News – 09-10-2019
A new investigative journalist unit in South Africa Viewfinder has told Radio Islam there is a deluge of complaints against the police.
Torture, rape, killings, assault – South Africans lodged more then forty two thousand criminal complaints against the police between April 2012 and March 2019.
Viewfinder’s debut investigation exposed underfunding, State Capture and statistical manipulation at the police watchdog Ipid.
Investigative journalist Daneel Knoetze says Ipid failed the victims and helped violent criminals in the police service escape accountability.
“The cases have been manipulated and the statistics have been essentially rigged to give the appearance that Ipid is performing at a better level when in actual fact we can now see that police are not really held accountable and that many of these investigations were prematurely closed and completed according to whistleblowers and our data analysis.”
Knoetze says police non-accountability in South Africa is a complex issue.
“It doesn’t rely only on one institution, that’s the first thing. The second thing is that in spite of these challenges, Ipid’s response to these challenges at least has been a dishonest one from what we’ve been able to find.”
In a statement, Ipid dismissed the allegations as untested and unproven.
Listen to the interview with Daneel Knoetze
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