During the three-month national lockdown, the SAPS has been accused of being heavy-handed as they cajoled a traumatised nation into obeying a whole new set of regulations to halt the spread of Covid-19.
South Africa’s case is not unique, however. Across the planet, police forces have had mixed reviews in how they have dealt with policing in the time of the novel coronavirus.
And it is how police forces act during this troubled time that will have a long-lasting effect on their relationship with the communities they serve, believes Dan Jones, an inspector with the Edmonton police in Canada and researcher at the University of Huddersfield in the UK.
Police forces can either adopt an authoritarian approach or respond with compassion and care, he said.
“If the police respond with compassion and care when they are required to enforce public health laws due to the pandemic response of their respective nations, this could build police legitimacy in a time of crisis,” Jones said
His research appeared in the journal Policing and drew on data from around the world.
The pandemic has placed an extra burden on the police, who have to enforce new laws, while worrying about their own health.
The concern, said Jones, is that by using the wrong approach, they can lose their legitimacy with poor communities, who are often over-policed and distrustful of the police.
“The problem is that beyond the pandemic, you will have people not calling the police or afraid to call the police.
“You have this whole concept of de-policing, where police are afraid to deal with these communities, and it becomes this whole quagmire of negativity that results in less community safety and well being,” said Jones.
In South Africa, the police’s handling of the lockdown did not start very well, according to criminologist Dr Andrew Faull of the Institute of Security Studies.
“At the start, they were very brutal, and then suddenly, they relaxed. It was probably a combination of poor communication with front line people because there wasn’t much lead time to plan for the implementation of the lockdown,” said Faull.
The problem, added Faull, is that some police members came into the lockdown with a culture of using abusive force.
By the end of last month, the SAPS had made 230 000 lockdown related arrests, and 11 people had died as a result of police action.
This prompted president Cyril Ramaphosa to tell reporters: “They let their enthusiasm get the better of them.”
Jones warned of police having a militarist or warrior mentality, and South Africa is not alone. To deal with this, Jones believes they need to understand who their clients are.
“It is not only compassion for the people that are involved in crime, we need to understand the social determinants of crime and health, and weave those into how we train and how we understand populations.
“And it’s about getting police agencies to work differently. And people say police reform. I say it is the evolution of policing and I think we need to evolve policing to have a public health lens.”
For Faull, the lockdown experience points to a police force that came into the crisis with inherent problems. The police could use this to reform and revise things, but it is not an opportunity that they haven’t had before.
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Source: IOL
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