September 2000 Volume 81 Number 9 "serving the protectors"
SAPOL forced to reconsider unmarked car safety
By John Ballantyne

A controversial SAPOL programme to downgrade the safety of unmarked police cars has been suspended temporarily as a result of intervention by PASA.

SAPOL’s decision last April to remove passenger airbags, ABS (anti-skid braking systems), sports suspension and heavy-duty wiring from unmarked police cars, has been slammed by PASA secretary, Andy Dunn, as “absolutely outrageous and totally unacceptable.”

PASA assistant secretary, Mark Carroll says: “The decision has actually entrenched two different safety standards: one for members working in 'marked’ fleets, and a sub-standard one for operational members who perform their duties in plain fleets.”

SAPOL has also been criticized for its failure at the outset of the programme to consult either its employees or occupational health and safety committees. This lack of consultation, according to Dunn, breaches sections of the occupational health, safety and welfare legislation.”

Furthermore, Dunn stresses that SAPOL’s suspension of its programme to remove police packs from unmarked cars has only been suspended, not rescinded.

“It hasn’t resulted in the recall of the vehicles already issued without police packs,” says Dunn. “We’ve got many examples of plain patrol vehicles without police packs.”

SAPOL’s corporate services director, Denis Patriarca, justifies the removal of police packs on financial grounds.

“I think it’s more a question of looking at what vehicles, or facilities within the vehicles, are provided to the various different operational areas,” says Patriarca.

“The police pack... is a specification for a general duty patrol sedan, and it has, for example, heavy-duty wiring for lights and sirens, etc. If the vehicle’s not being used for that purpose, then putting features on the car, that aren’t relevant to the purpose for which the vehicle is going to be used, doesn’t make a lot of sense.

“In fact, it ties up money in facilities we’re not utilizing properly. So it’s really a question of appropriate facilities for the functions at hand.”

Unmarked cars are no longer deemed by SAPOL to be frontline police-response vehicles. A general order, dating from January 2000, has specified that urgent-duty driving should not normally be undertaken by plain fleets.

However, PASA assistant secretary Mark Carroll has argued that this policy does not take into account the unpredictable nature of policing.

“We have examples,” says Carroll, “of where operational response has come first and foremost from an unmarked fleet.”

But Patriarca has defended SAPOL’s policy. He says: “I think that you’d need to actually look at what the occurrence rate is of unmarked vehicles being engaged in high speed pursuits. I’d suggest to you that it should be very infrequent...

“Unmarked vehicles normally shouldn’t be engaging in urgent-duty driving. If they do, they will be taking into account the extent of the circumstances - in other words, the significance of the event, the road conditions, the capability of the car, and so it goes on.”

Mark Carroll says that the packs are to be removed from plain fleets in country areas. “These fleets,” he says, “are driven by members on country roads where sufficient evidence exists to show that accidents happen.

“Why would you remove ABS braking and passenger airbags from those fleets? And what about STAR Group’s plain fleet used for close personal protection of VIPs or other high-risk duties?”

Denis Patriarca has sought to assure critics that, since July 19, SAPOL has been undertaking a review of the operational requirements of unmarked STAR Group cars and highway patrols.

But Carroll dismisses this as mere “back-peddling... a review of a review” and calls on SAPOL to rescind its downgrading of police car safety immediately.

“This economic rationalist decision is disturbing,” he says. “It’s about saving money instead of ensuring safety.”

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