Africa-Press – South-Africa. The Constitutional Court has ruled that the Minister of Police is liable for damages, finding that Eastern Cape police officers were negligent when they searched for a missing woman. The woman ended up enduring a 10-hour rape ordeal.
The court found that the police conducted “a negligent search and investigation” after the woman, identified as Ms K was abducted at King’s Beach in Gqeberha in 2010.
Two and half years after her ordeal, she turned to the Eastern Cape High Court because she believed the police did not conduct a proper investigation into her abduction.
She asked the court to hold the police and the minister liable for negligently omitting to conduct an effective search and investigation. She argued that the rape ordeal could have been prevented if they did a proper job.
The High Court found that the police were negligent in their investigation and duty towards her but the minister later took the matter to the Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA) where the decision was overturned.
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The SCA ruled that the police used all the resources at their disposal and dismissed the woman’s case.
Ms K took the matter to the Constitutional Court and, in a majority judgment written by Justice Pule Tlaletsi, the court found that the police did not conduct a thorough search for Ms K and did not investigate the matter properly.
Ms K was abducted while walking on the beach in 2010 at the end of a business trip, hours before she caught a flight back to Johannesburg. Her family reported her missing after she didn’t pick up her things from her mother’s place in time for her flight.
Police searched for her at the beach and found that her car had been broken into.
It emerged in court that officers from the New Brighton police station went to the beach, along with a dog trained to search for drugs and not people.
A warrant officer drove his 4×4 vehicle along the shoreline to check whether a person could be lying in the water. He drove up to the harbour wall and then conducted a foot search with his dog.
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His dog managed to spot three male “bush dwellers” and the officer asked them if they had seen anything out of the ordinary or a person who might be lost. They hadn’t, so he ended his foot search.
Police then called the helicopter unit to conduct “night sun” – a bright light used to enhance visibility at night – along the shoreline, dunes and bushes for about 20 minutes but nothing was found.
Ms K managed to escape after several hours and asked joggers for help. She was immediately taken to the police station to report the matter. Her attackers remain at large.
Tlaletsi said the warrant officer’s foot search was “conducted negligently in that he failed to search the area F to G at King’s Beach”.
He stated that had the warrant officer walked up to point F and allowed his dog to move 20 to 30 metres into the area, it would possibly have picked up the presence of the people who were in the area, including the applicant.
He also found that the police failed to search the area where the “bush dwellers” lived.
“A reasonable police officer would have suspected that the perpetrator could not be too far from the scene, given the information that the applicant had recently escaped and immediately reported the incident to the SAPS.
“In addition to focusing on the spot where the applicant was raped and kept overnight, the investigations should also have focused on trying to apprehend the perpetrator as quickly as possible. To that end, the SAPS ought to have questioned the ‘bush dwellers’ as early as they could.”
Tlaletsi also said the warrant officer investigating the case only viewed the CCTV footage for the first time years later in preparation for the civil trial, saying:
“The High Court found that the delay in the viewing of the footage and the SAPS’ inactiveness to view the whole footage was negligent. I agree with this conclusion. This is basic. Any and all reasonable leads had to be followed up in the course of a proper investigation. This the SAPS failed to do.”
He found that the police investigation was negligent.
“They furthermore failed to act promptly and expeditiously so as to follow up on any available leads. The investigation was not deficient because it failed to result in a successful prosecution of the applicant’s perpetrators, but because the methodology was flawed; the police failed to act diligently and with the skill required of them by the Constitution.
The court ruled that the SCA’s order should be set aside.
The minister was ordered to pay the woman’s costs in the SCA and Constitutional Court.
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