I could not believe the ordeal that Brenda Brugger, a The Hill resident, had to go through. Her letter to the COURIER, published under the headline “It doesn’t rain, it pours”, left me with a roller coaster of emotions. Poor Mrs Brugger was taken from pillar to post with little to show for it after a despicable person stole from her.
The part of the story that really jumped out at me was when Mrs Brugger described her experience at the police station.
This story, and many others, reminds us that we must not allow lazy or incompetent police officers to dictate to us how they should perform; to the extent that they make up their own “laws”. What do I mean by this? Mrs Brugger was told by the Moffat View SAPS that they could not open a case of theft because she “did not have her (the thief’s) registration number”.
What utter rubbish! When next a police officer says such things, ask him or her to provide you the legislation that they are quoting from. Providing information to the police is not a prerequisite to opening a case!
The SAPS are there to open cases and it is their job to do the investigation, otherwise what would be the point of having a police service at all, if we are expected to undertake our own investigations and to provide information ourselves!
Because we experience the atrocious and below sub-standard service from the SAPS, it has become almost acceptable for the public to accept the nonsense that some police officers dish out. This is because they are simply too lazy to do one of the most basic tasks that any police officer anywhere in the world is expected to do: receive and lodge a statement from a member of the public.
We must not accept this dribble. If we all refuse to accept SAPS excuses, very soon the SAPS would have no option but to do this very basic task! Indeed, this also goes for when police officers refuse to take a statement.
We need to stand up against this by demanding a service and not walking out of the police station empty handed.
Manny de Freitas, MP for Johannesburg South
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