“Law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice and when they fail in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress” – Martin Luther King Jr.

Maintaining law and order in society is a task bestowed on law enforcement in most countries. That includes the maintenance of public order. With law and order maintained and public order safeguarded, every person can enjoy their rights and freedoms, individually and collectively, and society can prosper and our combined social wellbeing grows.

The commission of crimes, any crime, has the potential to impact on that fragile construct. As do disturbances of public order when, for example, protest turns violent.

It follows logically then, that much of law enforcement attention and resources are focused on prevention and detection of crime and the physical maintenance of public order, or the restoration of public order where disturbed.

However, what happens when law enforcement methods and practices cause a bigger outrage than the wrong they are attempting to right? What happens when the restoration of public order leads to (further) escalation and confrontation between police and members of the public?

The South African Police Service (SAPS) boasts a track record in policing public order that since the events at Marikana in 2012 has been the subject of tense debate and increasingly intense scrutiny. However, debate and scrutiny, on appearance alone, have not led to any fundamental changes in appearance, practices and equipment used in POP. 

Images of POP units at a protest in Cape Town, pulling a motorcycle rider off his bike, while deploying stun grenades and with a POP member clearly visible, having his sidearm drawn, went around the world. I am unclear about any apparent wrong committed by the bike rider. It looks like, at very slow speed, he approaches and rides through plastic tape. Why POP members present did not simply stop him and talk to him and explain that the tape is there to block access beyond it, is incomprehensible.

The escalation that follows when the biker is pulled off his bike (the bike drops, likely sustaining damage and angering the rider) is completely of POP’s making. I did not see any attempt at containment by POP. I did not see any co-ordinated and coherent tactics employed by POP. Instead, I see stun grenades go off and I see one POP member with his sidearm drawn. I think that neither the stun grenades nor the drawing of the firearm can be justified under those circumstances.

POP is stuck in the 1970s and repeatedly manages to do more harm than good, trusting a severely limited selection of tactics that are mostly reactive, mainly static, set piece and preferring distance between police and protesters. Furthermore, POP has an array of very limited means available. In addition to protective equipment and sidearms, these means include water cannons, tear gas, stun grenades and rubber bullets. And I note here that water cannons, tear gas and stun grenades are blunt tools. They are indiscriminate and will also affect individuals against whom their deployment was not directed or intended, risking triggering their anger and upset or potentially causing unwarranted injury.

They are tools that stem from an era where police saw and treated people in a crowd as one entity. It made sense to the police to employ methods and means that addressed the crowd as a whole.

Contemporary views on crowd behaviour are that crowds are not a homogenous mass of people all more or less behaving in the same way. People in crowds retain their individuality and will continue to make their own decisions. Of course, these decisions may well be triggered or encouraged by actions or words of other people in the crowd. Therefore, an argument is to be made for police capability to identify potential flash points and their agitators early on to isolate them and to remove them from the crowd.

There are ample examples in South Africa of crowds becoming volatile, confrontational and violent, with a modicum of organisation and a high degree of mobility. Current POP responses to such crowds fall far short of being able to resolve and de-escalate such situations and, as history shows time and again, quickly escalate and lead to running battles between protesters and police, resulting in chaos. In fast-moving situations, the water cannon is of no use, the deployment of tear gas not an option and stun grenades only add to the pandemonium and don’t resolve anything. All too often there is evidence of rubber bullets being fired at individuals at point-blank range, which carries the risk of serious injury and/or death.

I think it is time that POP appreciates and accepts that its methods are dated and ill-suited to modern-day protest, and that its tools are inappropriate and do not work. Or worse still, only work to further aggravate or escalate a situation at hand. And the irony is that, while escalating the use of force and firearms in a bid to restore public order, with each stun grenade thrown, each tear gas canister deployed and each rubber bullet fired there is a dramatic increase in the negative impact of those measures on police image and reputation by the public. In turn, that can lead to further undermining the status of law and order.

When the Panel of Experts, set up to review the Marikana Commission of Inquiry recommendations, argued to move away from traditional notions of crowd control and embrace the ideas of public order management, it was arguing for the introduction of competency-based training for POP. This would entail the identification and definition of areas of knowledge and skills and attitudes (competencies) members of POP would have to acquire and maintain. This would be true for both individual competencies as well as for those required for effective functioning at group, section, platoon or company levels. The latter to foster uniformity, discipline, coherence and cohesion in the application of tactics and manoeuvres. Officers with command responsibility would receive additional competency-based training to equip them for their role. Therefore, no more officers commanding with no knowledge and/or skills pertinent to POP.

In this view POP would become a highly trained and disciplined entity, managed and led along structures different from those currently in vogue. It would be highly mobile, at will visible or invisible, capable of operating in civilian clothing, regular uniform or, if necessary, in full protective clothing with helmets and shields.

POP would be acutely aware of the non-verbal messages its appearance sends to the public, and adjust its visual presentation accordingly. POP action would be information driven and intelligence led. Through arrest and spotter units, potential agitators and potential flash points would be identified early. These units, blending in with the crowd, would arrest agitators and quickly remove them from the crowd. POP would be a police realising that most gains stand to be made from constructive dialogue with the public, from explaining how society as a whole will benefit from law and order maintained. Or suffer as a whole where police and public together fail to do so.

POP would be seeking to achieve a status of “policing by consent” through creating understanding for the task they perform and seeking its acceptance. In a constructive dialogue, police will be asking both permission and co-operation from the public while clearly communicating police mission and objectives and corresponding tolerance levels. In doing so police can then also manage public expectations through being upfront and clear about possibilities and limitations of police performance in any given operation or setting.

POP would have access to different tools. They would range from information-gathering technologies to mobility solutions, to diversification of protective and self-defensive equipment. A diverse range of means of less than lethal capabilities would exist, allowing for a differentiated approach in the use of force under command. Indiscriminate means would be eliminated from the arsenal.

International law clearly states that firearms must not be used as a means of crowd dispersal at any time. POP members would of course carry their personal sidearm, but their use would be strictly limited to individual cases of self-defence against an imminent threat to life or serious injury.

As you can see, there is much to be done. It is time the minister of police engages the South African public and Parliament on the work done by the Panel of Experts, and issues the necessary directives for this work to commence. The minister of police is, inexplicably, wasting valuable time as it is evident that the populace is restive, given the social and economic situation in South Africa, resulting in more frequent and violent protests. DM