5.6 Challenges encountered by KZN IPID investigating officers
5.6.2 Lack of cooperation from the complainant
The main function of the independent oversight agency is to give the public a chance to voice their complaints with regards to the manner in which the police interact with them. This means that the priority of investigators is to serve the public. Smith (2013:199) states that “complaints procedures serve to address citizens’ grievances with the police…to protect human rights”. In the process of fulfilling their duties as the voice of the public, IPID investigating officers experience challenges as complainants often do not fully cooperate with them. The first step in the process of investigation is for a victim to lodge a complaint to the IPID against a particular police officer who violated his or her rights. However, many challenges and frustrations were experienced by IPID investigating officers after a complaint had been lodged and an investigation had commenced.
The researcher asked: “Can you tell me about the challenges that you encounter when dealing with cases of torture and assault by members of the SAPS?”
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As high as 90% of the participants admitted that they experienced challenges, particularly in terms of complainants’ lack of cooperation in the investigation. Miller (2009) indicates that the success of any investigation depends, among other things, on the statements of victims and witnesses. In this regard, the participants were almost unanimous in sharing their frustrations regarding the complainants that they have to deal with. This is illustrated in their statements that highlight various reasons why complainants fail to cooperate. P-Inv-55 commented:
“The complainant opens the case, then he wants to withdraw, or sometimes in the middle of the investigation a complainant just disappears. You call him to set up a meeting but, they won’t pitch up and you show up at their residence and then he will tell his family members to say he is not here. So, complainants give us problems at times, because they are not cooperative.”
P-Inv-46 provided a clear illustration of how the lack of cooperation on the side of complainants is a challenge in their investigation process:
“Our complainants will come and open a case against the SAPS, and you start investigating that case. You must understand that you don’t just investigate a case for one week and then the next week it is completed. It requires a lot of effort. Let’s say in the next two months when we get back to the complainant and you find that the complainant is no longer interested in the case anymore, and now the complainant is running away from you. So, that’s one of the reasons why these cases are usually not successful.”
The problem of a lack of cooperation by complainants was not limited to a certain step in a process of an investigation. The participants indicated that complainants often refused to cooperate and tended to informally withdraw at any point when they felt that they were no longer interested in the case. P-Inv-49 explained that lack of cooperation was also experienced during a trial:
“Yoh, you will find that the victim when the case is still new he will be in and out of here in the office, asking about the progress, but when the matter is going to court and you need him to go and testify in court, you can’t find him…the suspect was arrested, and charged and he is going to trial now, and this person is nowhere to be found.”
Similarly, P-Inv-54 explained:
“Even complainants at times do not come on board when you need them for this ID parade. Even now I’ve got a case of assault and I’m struggling to do an ID parade because I’m trying to chase one witness who is running around.”
A gnawing question is why a complainant refuses to cooperate after having been given an opportunity to voice his or her grievance and get justice. Most of the participants highlighted
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that the answer to this question was found in the motive for opening the case. P-Inv-46 and P- Inv-53 summarised some of the reasons that the majority of the participants shared. P-Inv-46 commented:
“You find that a complainant opened a case when he was still angry or because he was pressured by his friends to open a case against the police.”
P-Inv-53 agreed, and added:
“Others will give you a run around, maybe because there was a case opened against them, now they open an assault case and then you find that cases against them were withdrawn because maybe there was insufficient evidence against them, so now they are no longer interested in our case and they won’t tell us that, ‘Listen I’m no longer interested in the case’, and then come through and file a statement or let us meet them to take a statement. They will just give you a run-around.”
The findings indicate that IPID investigating officers are hindered in the execution of their tasks by complainants who do not cooperate. The reasons are multiple, such as they opened a case when they were still angry, they were pressured by friends, they were suspects in another SAPS case, they were afraid to testify, or the complainant did not want to (or could not) identify the suspect (SAPS member). When complainants withdraw in the middle of an investigation, the three objectives of a complaint are undermined, namely: (i) In the absence of a complaint, an investigation is unlikely to be initiated; (ii) if there is no complaint [or complainant], the police will miss a potential learning opportunity that could lead to an improvement in services;
(iii) the lack of a complaint may lead to impunity for the offender and a culture of impunity in the long term (UNODC, 2011).
Even though it can be argued that the first objective is achieved when the complainant lodges a complaint, the following two objectives are never fulfilled in cases where the complainant fails to cooperate. Smith (2013:199) argues that the system of complaints is an accountability mechanism that was established with the aim of identifying rogue officers. This was done for the purpose of maintaining a disciplined and effective force by holding law enforcement officials accountable for their actions in criminal and disciplinary proceedings that are taken based on the evidence obtained in the investigation of a compliant. Therefore, lack of cooperation impacts the success of achieving police accountability as well as the thoroughness of any investigation.
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