February 2002 Volume 83 Number 2
"serving the protectors"
| February 2002 Volume 83 Number 2 "serving the protectors" |
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Few would consider it improper for the press to report on annual police-complaints figures. The public has an obvious interest in its police force, and every right to see how various figures stack up.
But, reports on an issue as serious as police complaints, must come with equally serious perspective.
Through its title and structure, a recent newspaper article (Police in complaints firing line, The Advertiser, 28.12.01) tended to lack such perspective. Its author reported that the Police Complaints Authority received 1,147 complaints for the 2000-01 financial year.
Only in the last 45-odd words of the article did readers learn that more than half of 1,074 finalized complaints were “found not to require further investigation”.
Perhaps the story title should have read: “Police endure more than 500 false or frivolous complaints.”
Sadly, the only fictitious complaint on which the reporter elaborated was that of a man who claimed his bones were degenerating from speed cameras. Why not report on serious cases of criminally concocted allegations against police – and the devastation they cause targeted officers?
The less enlightened might not understand that criminals have an intense aversion to being caught. And, believe it or not, they can often prove to be quite spiteful types. Lodging frivolous and/or false complaints against police can – and does – leave criminal complainants with a perverse sense of satisfaction.
It is, for many, simply a case of abusing the system to win some payback.
Reporting the injustice that flows from many complaints against police has, over the years, been left entirely to association publications, such as the Police Journal. The journal will continue to report on that injustice – with perspective.
As I wrote two years ago, the officers who feature in our continuing series about their careers provide as much study material as they do reading pleasure.
If one could follow their changing views, I asserted, one could pinpoint – and counter – cops’ career lows.
My views came at a time of “relatively high” rates of resignation. Our current round of interviews (in The Careers Continue) comes, significantly, at time when SAPOL is undertaking one of its most substantial recruitment drives.
Most would hope those recruited take policing on as a lifetime career. Today’s figures, however, suggest terms of 12 years (males) and seven years (females).
Police employers must pursue the retention issue with vigour equal to that with which they are now recruiting. To recruit without a plan for retention renders, in many ways, the whole process pointless.
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