Crime expert Doctor Chris De Kock says divisions along political lines are hampering the work of the Crime Intelligence Unit.
Parliament’s Portfolio Committee on Police has lambasted management for glaring failures in the last financial year.
Police top brass has been asked to account for failures in crime intelligence, reducing the DNA backlog and failure to make progress on applications at the central firearms registry.
Only 80% of the budget allocated to Crime Intelligence was spent.
De Kock is calling for a complete overhaul of the department.
“You have to appoint a clean senior officer group, people who are there and really interested in crime intelligence and in intelligence gathering. And then they will have to clean up the organisation. In this case, you will have to start at the top. We can see how deep the rot was in SSA (State Security Agency) that the President had to remove that department to his own office which is actually a very significant step,” says De Kock.
Addressing DNA backlog
In April this year, Police Commissioner Bheki Cele said an IT company had been appointed to track samples in a bid to address the issue of DNA evidence sample backlogs at the National Forensic Science Laboratory.
He said the new digital system is able to trace seven to 8 000 samples a week.
Cele added that it would assist in bringing perpetrators of crime to book:
