COMMISSION OF INQUIRY INTO ALLEGATIONS OF POLICE INEFFICIENCY IN KHAYELITSHA AND A BREAKDOWN IN RELATIONS BETWEEN THE COMMUNITY AND POLICE IN KHAYELITSHA PHASE TWO

Transcript of Jean Redpath’s Testimony

Date: 12 May 2014 Source: Pages 6742-6835 of Commission transcript

COMMISSIONER: Good morning, good morning Advocate Arendse, morning Mr Hathorn, Mr Bishop welcome to the second phase of proceedings it’s going to be a challenging week I think to get through this very impressive array of expert witnesses that the Commission will be hearing this week. I don’t think there are any administrative matters that need clearing are there Ms Bawa? MS BAW A: I can’t think of any righ t now but if there are we can maybe address it after the lunch adjournment. COMMISSIONER: Okay excellent good. Yes Mr Arendse? MR ARENDSE: Good morning Madam Commissioner and Advocate Pikoli we missed each other. COMMISSIONER: I beg your pardon? MR ARENDSE: I say we missed each other for the past couple of weeks. COMMISSIONER: Yes. MR ARENDSE: There are a few outstanding matters that I know have been referred to National. COMMISSIONER: Yes. MR ARENDSE: By the Provincial Commissioner so I think subject to correction there would be about two or three matters that are outstanding. COMMISSIONER: Excellent. MR ARENDSE: I don’t know if (indistinct) is here to throw some light on that? COMMISSIONER: Yes that’s right it was the Project 54 report and there were some other documents of that sort. MR ARENDSE: Yes. COMMISSIONER: What I will do is I will ask (indistinct) and we’ll come back to you as a public record of what it is that we’re still pursuing. MR ARENDSE: Yes but certainly as far as my clients here in the pr ovince are concerned in fact when we had a joint consultation with Ms Holtman I facilitated a meeting between Ms Bawa and the Western Province Command and there was a handover, an exchange of documents. COMMISSIONER: Excellent thank you. I’ve just been ha nded an issue but let me have a look at it and I will come back to you before I read it out. Well thank you very much, thank you Ms Redpath again for a very helpful report you will recall of course that these proceedings are public and that your name and your testimony may be made public. I can’t remember do you take an oath or an affirmation? MS REDPATH: (Off mic) COMMISSIONER: You take an oath good. JEAN REDPATH (sworn states) EXAMINATION BY MS BAWA MS BAWA: Good morning Ms Redpath you’ve provided us w ith a curriculum vitae and can you confirm that the contents of that curriculum vitae are correct? MS REDPATH: Yes. MS BAWA: You have also prepared a report for the Commission. MS REDPATH: That’s correct. MS BAW A: As per our discussion your evidence will b e led with you taking us through the salient parts of the report and if there is any aspect of it that I’d like clarified I would do that after you’ve done your presentation is that…(intervention) MS REDPATH: That’s correct. MS BAWA: Okay. MS REDPATH: Good morning everyone, I was asked to look at three issues, three interrelated issues; the first being the relative resourcing of police stations in the Western Cape so that’s to actually look at the numbers of police officers allocated to different police sta tions in the Western Cape. When I say relative resourcing this report is confined to human resources so we have not looked at other resources in terms of spending on infrastructure, vehicles etc., this is purely human resources. The second thing that I wa s asked to do was to comment on the method apparently employed by SAPS to determine that relative resourcing. Finally to propose an alternative method for determining resourcing. The report necessarily goes through a lot of basic arithmetic so I hope that I’ll be able to explain clearly enough but the bottom line is that whatever method is used to determine relative resourcing once you’ve done your calculations and you’ve come up with a method that needs to be checked against a per capita method to see if any obvious anomalies come up. That is a method which is, the per capita allocation is something which is published by the UK police forces as a transparent method so that people can see exactly how many police per 100 000 in their area has been allocated. It has to be transparent it’s got to be fair. That is the method that I adopt to review the actual resourcing of police stations in the Western Cape to see if any of obvious anomalies arise. To go back a step if we were to say that policing is, policin g burden the actual problems and burden of policing were distributed equally from person to person, in other words there’s no difference between the policing environment in one area and another area, then the per capita method would simply be a very simple way of applying it. It’s the same sort of situation as you’ve got 100 schoolchildren and 10 textbooks well then 10 school kids have to share one textbook it’s a simple arithmetic calculation of dividing available resources by the number of people. When we do the per capita calculations using personnel figures that were supplied to me by Lamoer and population data calculated based on Census 2011 we find that Harare actually has the lowest number of police personnel per 100 000 of all police stations in th e Western Cape. Now that’s 10 times fewer… COMMISSIONER: Ms Redpath can I just pause you there because you say that you used the Census 2011 figures but actually they are ticked upwards from 2011 you’ve added a percentage per year? MS REDPATH: I have not. COMMISSIONER: You have not. MS REDPATH: So that would be an underestimate of population areas which have shown growth and then an overestimate of population areas which have shown a reduction. COMMISSIONER: Has Stats SA produced figures for 2012 and 2013 b ased on their assumptions? MS REDPATH: They have produced such figures but only at provincial level so you cannot go down to the level of detail of a police station area currently. COMMISSIONER: What you’d have to do is you’d have to work out a proportion of the provincial increase and then add that across assuming that there’d been a generalised increase. MS REDPATH: You would have to do that but we know that some areas have increased and others have decreased even within provinces so that would in itself have problems. So the actual figure we come out for Harare is 111 police personnel per 100 000 and for the comparison in Camps Bay there are 959 police personnel per 100 000 people. MS BAW A: Sorry Ms Redpath can I, it might be better if I do interrupt you when you’re on a particular subject like this rather than go back but it does seem on the figures you present when the Minister released the crime stats in September 2013 and he looked at the national personnel strength at 197 946 the police to population ratio nationally was 1:336 so on that the Harare figures are actually less than the national average. MS REDPATH: Yes in fact ja. COMMISSIONER: Can you just say what the national average is 1:36? MS BAWA: 1:336. MS REDPATH: Just to bear in mind that the f igures, the Lamoer figures I understand are SAPS personnel as opposed to civilian personnel so they would be lower than the national figures which tend to, especially the annual report figures which tend to include all personnel including those employed under the Public Service Act. COMMISSIONER: That number of 197 000 which is the broader population is that PSA personnel including the…(intervention) MS REDPATH: That’s including Public Service, sorry for the delay I just wanted to show you the, so there i s a possibility that such unequal allocations could nevertheless be fair but that would imply that Harare has the lowest policing burden of any police station in the Western Cape. I think common sense tells us that that’s simply not the case that Harare, certainly the evidence that we’ve heard here, suggests that that is not the case. If we look at the ratios on the screen they have been ranked from the most resourced per 100 000 to the least resourced. Now obviously areas like Table Bay Harbour and Cape Town Central they are going to look excessively resourced because they are dealing with transient populations of people who don’t actually live there. So when you calculate per 100 000 people who live there it looks particularly… COMMISSIONER: Can I just interrupt again is this, what you have up on the screen is the schedule you’ve got at page 9 of your report? MS REDPATH: Yes that’s correct. COMMISSIONER: While we’re on this issue of transient populations what is your sense of what’s best practice as how to correct for transient populations, non-resident populations? MS REDPATH: I believe that that is in the method that I will propose later which takes into account the number of crimes which occur. I believe that the transient population is reflected in that figure because the number of crimes increases as you have a greater number of people coming into a city or a place. Consequently if you were then to take account of the transient population and the number of crimes you would in a sense be double counting because the number of crimes automatically rises when you have a high transient population. In any event the figures which are in blue have better than the Western Cape average and we see Camps Bay sitting there at No. 6, we see Mowbray at No. 12, Rondebosch at No. 26, we go down and then we get to, once we get into the pink realm that is stations which have lower than the Western Cape average which is under around 280 per 100 000 people. Quite near Lingelethu West is just below average but as we g o down we find Khayelitsha at No. 134 out of 149 police stations. Also near the bottom of the list Guguletu, Strandfontein, Mfuleni, Delft, Ocean View, Nyanga and at the very bottom by quite a long way Harare at 111 per 100 000. The figures to the right of the 100 000 figures are the actual numbers on which those calculations are based. So the question that immediately arises is how did these allocations come about and the SAPS argument is this is rationally related to the burden of policing and there’s a theoretical human resource requirement which is calculated. This theoretical human resource requirement is calculated using a range of factors relevant to a particular policing area. All of the factors tend to relate to the difficulty of burden, the diff iculty of policing, the burden of policing for example the number of square kilometres that have to be covered, the presence of schools, the daily influx of commuters, the number of gangs, the actual incidents of crime, the proximity of courts and prisons as well as the internal police bureaucracy. So for example if they offer firearm services whether it’s an accounting station or not so all of these factors apparently lead to those figures. For me the first problem that arises with this approach is it’s highly dependent on accurate information being supplied and any incorrect estimates can result in large distortions. Indeed in some of the documentation I’ve seen SAPS itself has alluded to misrepresentations designed to influence allocations being made. A number of errors have also been apparent in the THRR information that I’ve seen, for example incorrect unemployment rates which have been used is another factor which is taken into account. The other problem is what weight do you add to the unemploymen t rate as opposed to the number of gangs, how do you weight these two factors, it’s entirely subjectively determined and in my view it’s almost impossible to take into account all relevant factors in a way that does not result in double counting. So a factor may for example influence the crime rate and you’ve now counted both the factor and the crime rate, that’s double counting or you may take into account factors which cancel each other out. Indeed, factors which speak to the incidence of crime are prob ably better indicated by the actual incidence of crime that’s what we’re really interested in. In the previous submission made to this Commission I submitted that the extent of underreporting in the three Khayelitsha areas can be shown by comparing the murder rate to the total number of crimes and that reported crime in these three areas is in fact far lower than the actual incidence of crime. I also argued that the number of murders is a suitable (indistinct) for the variation in the true incidence of, in particular, serious violent crime. Ultimately the best test of the SAPS method is common sense, does the method result in fairly distributed resources. We know that township areas, in fact we’ve heard evidence even from SAPS itself saying that township a reas are known for their difficulty of policing yet almost all township areas in this data demonstrate downward adjustments from the per capita allocations, they’re getting less than they would get if there was simple distribution of resources and they’re getting less than the average amount. This suggests that the SAPS method, the factors taken into account comes to the conclusion that the burden of policing is less in these areas compared to the average and we simply know that that’s not the case which i n and of itself suggests that there’s a problem with the method. MS BAWA: Can you from looking at the method work out what the problem actually is? MS REDPATH: I think in three areas there’s been an incorrect estimate of the population so that could have an effect but only on those three areas. For the township areas I was never provided with the full formula with the exact weighting to replicate, I wasn’t able to replicate the calculations. I was informed about the factors and that these are double weight ed or half weighted but I was never given the full formula to replicate. So it is unclear to me where the problem – the problem could possibly be using the incidence of reported crime because the three stations have a lower than expected incidence of reported crime. So for example if you’re in Rondebosch or Khayelitsha, Rondebosch people are reporting to a much higher extent than they are in Khayelitsha so if you’re using reported crime as a large factor all the township areas are likely to be under accou nted for in that way. COMMISSIONER: There were two aspects to the way in which it was calculated that seemed to me to be likely to prejudice township areas. One was there’s a very strong emphasis on the number of businesses in an area so there’s a whole list of the type of businesses that there may be and they seem to be weighted so the more businesses you have the more heavily weighted. Now of course one does accept that businesses do need to be policed but in areas which are economically under developed you’re not going to find very many businesses so that seemed to be an important area in which there seemed to be perhaps over compensation. The other is that there seemed to be a very small weighting for the difficulties of policing in informal areas it’ s something that the SAPS evidence was repeated again and again the challenges of visible policing, but not only visible policing, but the challenges of visible policing in areas where there aren’t streets and street lights and road numbers and so on and y et according to Brigadier Rabie that is only weighted a very small percentage in the overall figure. So I’m sure there are others as well when you go through the actual schedule one sees that but what’s interesting to me is that in all three cases the population figures are probably overstated in the THRR. On the demographic evidence we have which seems to be reliable it seems as if SAPS overstates the population figures which would of course increase the number of police but all the other factors seem to weigh against giving an accurate population ratio. MS REDPATH: Yes that all make sense to me, what would also – I think what’s also happening is factors have been double counted so if you were counting the number of businesses the reasoning behind that is if you have businesses you have more crime but then you’re already counting that in crime so now you’ve counted those things twice and it negatively affects township areas which don’t have business and which under report crime. So there’s a range of reason s why this would arise. The question arises what is a fair method of adjusting per capita figures and I make a proposal in my submission which I do not suggest is the B -all and the end-all but it gives a much cleaner and more transparent way of understanding how resources should be distributed. COMMISSIONER: Can I just understand what I understand from what you’ve said, one is that you take a per capita, the national per capita availability of police and you do that in relation to visible policing. MS REDPATH: Yes. COMMISSIONER: What proportion of a police station does visible policing and you do that on a per capita basis. Then when it comes to detectives you do that on a reported crime basis because by definition detectives are only dealing with reported crime. MS REDPATH: Yes. COMMISSIONER: And you do that on a…(intervention) basis. MS REDPATH: Yes. COMMISSIONER: Ditto for crime intelligence because again crime intelligence are dealing on a reported crime is that correct? MS REDPATH: I think for crime intelligence I used the murder rate as an indicator of the actual instance of crime that’s because crime intelligence is supposed to be uncovering and preventing crime which actually occurs rather than just reported crime. COMMISSIONER: Then you added the per capita for administrative staff. MS REDPATH: Yes. COMMISSIONER: Is that right? MS REDPATH: That’s it in a nutshell, when you do that with the national figures you get an answer which tells you that the Western Cape is under resourced. When you do that with the provincial figures that we have now you, ja you get a different picture. COMMISSIONER: Before we go to what the picture is can we just talk about the way in which you’ve done it. So your comment is that in terms of calculating an appropriate resource allocation you should take into account both per capita and the crime rate but it seems to me that in fact you’re only really dealing with the crime rate in relation to the allocation of detectives and crime intelligence. MS REDPATH: Yes. COMMISSIONER: Not in relation to visible policing. MS REDPATH: That’s correct. COMMISSIONER: What worries me about that is that if one goes back to the first question I put to you or one of the earlier questions I put to you which was the transient population in fact it seems the transient population is a visible policing problem just as much as a detective problem and is there any way to correct for that? MS REDPATH: You would have to do very accurate measures of the data on population which many cities actually do t hey measure the data on population and they then adjust their figures. That is certainly possible but it would need to be, when you do that adjustment you’re then going to have to subtract population from other areas. So making that adjustment would indeed downward adjust for areas like Khayelitsha and Harare and Lingelethu West, we would see such a formula would reduce those figures. I think that and the way I’ve done the calculations is although I’m saying that detective resources should be distributed in this way I’m not saying that actually there should be so much more detective resources. I’m saying that that gives you the whole picture and there can be some adjustment within that so you would probably with the figure that you came out for Cape Town which would be inflated by the crime rate which was applied to the detective component but it may turn out actually you’ll have fewer detectives and more visible policing resources within that station. But the overall figure is then, has been adjusted by the crime rate applied to the available detective resources. MS BAW A: Can I add a question to that if you take the per capita putting the transient population aside for a moment what does seem to come out of the evidence before us is that being able to pr ovide visible policing in areas such as Khayelitsha there is a challenge because of environmental conditions and hence you actually require more. How in this methodology do you take that into account? MS REDPATH: It’s my view that I don’t think you requir e more people per 100 000 I think you require different vehicles so you might, and different methods. So it might be that you have a four wheel vehicle and two motorbikes going on patrol rather than just a vehicle. I think that the compounding factor that has to be taken into account is that yes it’s more difficult to police township areas because of the lack of roads and so on but what you actually have is a lot of people in a small area so to actually patrol that doesn’t take a lot of time. Whereas in other more formal areas you have people much more spread out so that’s a factor which then compounds your factor of township areas being difficult to police. So these two factors work against each other which is why I think that any method should be as si mple as possible because once you start bringing in all these factors you can think of counter-arguments and say but actually now we only have to walk one k to cover 1 000 people in Khayelitsha but in Rondebosch we have to walk 10 k’s to cover 1 000 people. So you know these compounding factors come into play. MS BAW A: You’ve looked at Rhalashiwe where they’ve policed in very similar circumstances to Khayelitsha were the circumstances there borne out by what you’re saying now, in other words does that supp ort what you’re suggesting in terms of policing in Khayelitsha? MS REDPATH: Well it’s a very similar profile with some formal housing, some informal housing, some backyard settlements, some RDP houses so in terms of the terrain it’s a very similar area. I t’s also a particularly large area of around 100 000 people so it’s a very similar situation to Khayelitsha also in terms of the age and racial profile and so on, it’s similar it’s not exactly the same but it’s similar. Certainly Rhalashiwe managed to red uce their number of murders which is a strong indicator of the true incidence of crime over a number of years quite dramatically. In fact I can, it’s not often that I attribute that kind of reduction to policing but policing certainly played a role in tha t reduction. MS BAW A: But my question was in visible policing that area did you find in doing your research that you didn’t require more policing but you probably required more thought-out policing… MS REDPATH: Yes they were very conscientious about identi fying hotspots, about patrolling those, about doing things in a different way, about walking through narrow areas between houses rather than trying to drive around. So yes there were differences in the way that people actually did the policing. ADV PIKOLI: Ma’am can I just explore the data in population further, on page 13 of your document where we have Cape Town Central and the figure of 580 is that 580 only the residents or it includes day time visitors? MS REDPATH: That’s the number of people per 100 0 00 residents and to the right of that one then has the actual number that you would see for Cape Town Central. At the far right is the actual number we currently have which is 541 SAPS personnel and the formula number as simply applied as I’ve done gives you only 203. Now I’m not suggesting that that’s necessarily the answer, what I’ve also built into the formula is what one would do is before doing the formula calculations one would first allocate the minimum number of people required for each police sta tion to operate at that level. So for example a cluster police station requires a different minimum from a satellite police station which only operates for a few hours so that would be a calculation which would take place first but I don’t have access to a ll the data of which police stations of which type. So this is really an indication of the bare application of the formula so the bare application of the formula would see if you look at the third ranked place we see Sea Point having 86 police personnel, currently they have 147. What we’ve got to bear in mind is if we want to get more police to one area we’ve got to take away from somewhere else so that is the balancing act. COMMISSIONER: Can I just ask on this, sorry Advocate Pikoli, but if I could just ask on that the first column the formula number per 100 000 what does that mean? MS REDPATH: So the formula, so per 100 000 people how many police personnel do we have in that area. COMMISSIONER: Okay so in other words we have got 6…(intervention) MS REDPATH: According to the formula so that’s 16 divided by the population of Table Bay Harbour. COMMISSIONER: So the middle number of the second column is the number you are suggesting…(intervention) MS REDPATH: The actual number, not the per 100 000 number but the actual physical number of police people. COMMISSIONER: Exactly. MS REDPATH: And then in the last column I’ve got the current number that we have at the moment and it’s interesting that some are actually quite close you know the formula figures and the actual numbers in some areas are very close but in others they’re vastly different. COMMISSIONER: So the reason why the Table Bay number is so high per 100 000 is because of the number of crimes, why is that so high? MS REDPATH: The formula number per 100 000? COMMISSIONER: Ja. MS REDPATH: Because it has a very low population, almost nobody lives in Table Bay Harbour. COMMISSIONER: Yes. MS REDPATH: Yes. COMMISSIONER: Yes but it’s 666. MS REDPATH: Per 100 – it’s actually only 16 police officers. COMMISSIONER: Yes I can see that but I don’t understand the first column. MS REDPATH: Okay so what I’ve simply done is I’ve applied the formula and I said, and I’ve done the same test that I did to the SAPS formula, I said what does that give me in terms of the per 100 000 calculation having applied the formula and got the answer that you need 16 people in Table Bay Harbour, what does that give in terms of the per 100 000 calculation and that’s what I’ve done. I’ve taken 16 and I’ve divided it by the population of t he area and I’ve multiplied by 100 000. COMMISSIONER: So what is the relevance of that first column why should we be interested in it? MS REDPATH: Why should we be interested in it, because I maintained at the beginning that we need to test any method that we use against the per capita method in order to find obvious anomalies and to double check ourselves. COMMISSIONER: Okay. MS REDPATH: If I applied this method and we again have Harare at the bottom of the list then we’ve got a problem. COMMISSIONER: Right okay. MS REDPATH: Or if we had Mitchell’s Plain on the bottom of the list or any area which we know actually is, actually has a great – I’m testing my own formula basically. COMMISSIONER: I understand that in other words what you’re doing is you’re seeing whether it’s been corrected for a crime burden and the top of the list should be the places where we see most crime effectively and at the bottom of the list should be the places where they police crime…(intervention) MS REDPATH: Well kind of, ja to some extent there’s been a partial correction for crime and actual incidence of crime. COMMISSIONER: That’s why it’s not just completely matched against population numbers. MS REDPATH: No. COMMISSIONER: That’s the factor that’s changed. MS REDPATH: Yes that’s the factor that’s changed so to what extent has the correction occurred and the corrections as you can see even though it’s only applied to a small component can be quite huge which shows the impact of taking into account reported crime even though we’ve o nly applied it to around 20% of the policing. MS BAWA: If I understand your formula you’re only working with actual figures, in other words we’re not increasing policing numbers you take the figures and you say we’ve got 20 000 police, you’re redistributin g our actual number. MS REDPATH: The actual number that I believe National allocated to the Western Cape I’ve taken those figures and I’ve said well now we’ve got this number how do we distribute it in a fair way. MS BAW A: But within every rule there’s an exception and maybe Table Bay Harbour is a good point, example because there are other interests that require policing in Table Bay Harbour. MS REDPATH: Certainly. MS BAWA: So one would say that that’s what section 12(3) of the SAPS Act is there for so that the Provincial Commissioner when using such a formula then looks at what is there and then says well I have other concerns in Table Bay Harbour or I have other concerns in another area and I then exercise my discretion to take care of those concerns…(int ervention) MS REDPATH: Certainly, certainly but then the key question there is if you’re going to increase Table Bay Harbour where are you going to take away from so that is the key question and it seems that all the adjustments which have taken place have taken away from township areas and that I think is irrational and unjust. MS BAW A: Well I don’t think the Provincial Commissioner necessarily agrees with you because his evidence to the Commission was that the RAG that has come into the province currently is simply irrational. MS REDPATH: Sorry that? MS BAWA: Well the Provincial Commissioner in fact testified that the actual RAG to the province is irrational. MS REDPATH: Certainly but I would argue that the way resources have actually been distributed is a lso irrational and that’s what I was testing at the beginning ja. Applying that formula we still end up with our township areas below the line but I would suggest that that is a more legitimate below the line position rather than being right at the bottom of the list. Obviously these adjustments have to take place annually so the very fact that Harare and Khayelitsha and Lingelethu West are under resourced means that they will have lower reported crime rates and so it’s self -confirming factor. So by adjusting upwards their resources slowly you should see a slight increase in the incidence of reported crime and the adjustment consequently would keep on moving slowly upwards and upwards, that’s what we would hope in any event. COMMISSIONER: Now obviously this is an enormously complex task firstly I mean you’ve adopted a relatively simple formula. MS REDPATH: Yes. COMMISSIONER: But it’s also a highly contentious task and it’s one which there’s certainly room for reasonable disagreement. What is your understanding of generally how this task is addressed in other democracies? MS REDPATH: I have not looked into how the other provinces do it… COMMISSIONER: Not provinces, other democracies. MS REDPATH: Oh other democracies. COMMISSIONER: Other parts of the world th at are democratic. MS REDPATH: Okay what I do know is that they always check it against the per capita allocation as the test afterwards, they do take into account transient populations, they do take into account. What countries that we know about tend not to have is township areas so in the UK you’re not going to have the problem of informal settlements and so we don’t have a guide from the UK on that. COMMISSIONER: They would have difficulty in the city areas the police. MS REDPATH: Yes. COMMISSIONER: Although they may not be identical but certainly the levels of income inequality and class issues which would inform that and are those factors that they take into account or do they drive it basically on a per capita…(intervention) MS REDPATH: My understanding is the primary is the population followed by reported crime, particularly when it comes to actually having to deal you know with investigation. Obviously other factors also come to count, I don’t have detailed insight as to how that is done I did attemp t to find out but it didn’t immediately emerge from my research possibly because it is so contentious. COMMISSIONER: Another question I was going to ask which is that it has been noticeable that very few witnesses who testified before the Commission who are closely involved in police work, members of SAPS have had any understanding at all of how the system works other than having question marks in their mind as to how it works. Frankly it was only when Brigadier Rabie gave evidence that we began to understa nd the issue. What are your comments on transparency in this area? MS REDPATH: Well certainly the actual number of figures should be available for the whole country. The per 100 000 calculation should be available for the whole country, there should be s ome justification for adjustments upward and downward from the average. As long as there’s justification but to simply quietly allocate wealthy areas more resources and not talk about it and not justify it is in my view problematic. What we have up here is the difference between the formula figures and, the formula as applied – my formula as applied to the actual personnel and the difference and we see the biggest difference between what is suggested by my formula and the actual figures occurs in Nyanga f ollowed by Harare, Kraaifontein, Delft, Guguletu, Mfuleni, Khayelitsha, Kleinvlei, Grassy Park. So all the areas which we should actually be most concerned about in terms of resourcing have lower than suggested, than my formula at least suggests. We also know that in terms of per capita they also have amongst the lowest figures. ADV PIKOLI: Taking further what the Judge says on the subjective determination of the weighting can you argue that that subjective determination does not lend itself to transpare ncy and might even lead to an impression of irrationality? MS REDPATH: Certainly if the entire formula when made available such that we could replicate the calculation we would know exactly what the relative weighting of the various factors is then that wo uld at least be transparent. Any formula, any indicator has to use some sort of weighting, the Human Development Index all of them but it’s transparent and it’s clear what has been done. In the Human Development Index three factors are weighted equally they don’t have to be equally weighted they can be, but be transparent about how you are weighting the factors. I think that too many factors are being taken into account, that they are compounding factors, that the actual relative weighting between them i s not transparent and it results in an irrational result and that is the key problem. Whatever formula you apply have a look at it and see does this actually make sense in the end and I’m arguing that no it doesn’t. COMMISSIONER: The two questions one wou ld ask to decide that make sense are is the per capita allocation way out of what the median per capita allocation is, are there considerations that relate to the burden of policing which would justify that variation. In other words taking Table Bay Harbo ur you’d say yes it’s way out of the mean but there are…(intervention) MS REDPATH: But these are the reasons why. COMMISSIONER: In relation particularly to Harare and Khayelitsha Site B the burden of policing would actually indicate the alternative situati on. MS REDPATH: Ja. COMMISSIONER: Whereas Khayelitsha, at least Lingelethu West doesn’t seem to be remarkable in that regard, those are particularly Harare and Khayelitsha Site B should in fact be getting more than the average because their burden of policing is…(intervention) MS REDPATH: My formula actually puts them at slightly less than the average funnily enough but at least it’s a justifiable allocation below, it’s a rational justifiable allocation. I wanted to demonstrate that you could make a fair formula that would nevertheless give them slightly less than average but it would make a massive adjustment upwards to what they currently have and that’s these figures here. Harare would need an additional 252 people to get my formula number of figures and that still is not, won’t give them the average. COMMISSIONER: You said they’d need which is in fact slightly less than the mean. MS REDPATH: Slightly less than the mean ja. MS BAW A: We’re looking at your Table 11 right which is on page 16 of your report. MS REDPATH: Yes that’s correct. MS BAW A: If you total up your actual personnel and your formula personnel would it come to the same total you’ve just played around…(intervention) MS REDPATH: If you added all those formula personnel you would end up or you should end up, there could be some problems with rounding that occurred in the application of the formula but you should end up with approximately the same number of people for the whole province if you added up those two columns. MS BAW A: Okay but having done that we know that when we look at the provincial allocated figure it’s not only to stations it includes personnel to cluster, it includes personnel to clusters, it includes personnel to the provincial office and it includes personnel to special units. How do you accommodate that in what you…(intervention) MS REDPATH: What I suggested is that those allocations would be made upfront so if you need a minimum number of 33 people to run an ordinary police station then make those allocations upfront, then a pply the formula, if the formula suggests that area actually needs fewer than the minimum allocation then you have to take the three away from the total, you have to take that away from the total when you then apply the formula afterwards. So make your minimum allocations first for the functions that are – then use the adjusted total to apply the formula on top of that. MS BAW A: I have a difficulty with that, when I think it’s General Burger testified and he testified as to what SAPS’ assessment was of the minimum number of personnel required to run for example a colonel station or a brigadier station, when one glanced down the list then they actually in some places had less numbers than what they were themselves saying is the minimum number required to run that station. Now we know that if we look at any figure they say because of shortages you automatically only operating at 70% of what we think we should be operating at but one would think that the SAPS’ assessment of a minimum number to run a station is firstly in reality not itself being applied and (2) it seems that some stations are in fact running at less than that minimum it’s a convoluted…(intervention) MS REDPATH: It does appear that some are operating at, I think for a particular type 33 are requ ired and I saw 28 so there are deviations downward however that is a whole other question. The whole idea of which station should be a cluster station and which station should be a reporting station and which station is a satellite station that is a whole other controversial topic which is I think currently more informed by the infrastructure available. So if you have a big police station you’re going to turn it into a cluster station that is the primary driver and to some extent one can’t argue with that. It’s a much longer term project to adjust the fact that we don’t have these big police stations in formerly deprived areas. That adjustment has indeed taken place with areas like KwaMashu receiving fancy new police stations but it’s an ongoing project. COMMISSIONER: Are there other things that you wish to cover at this stage? MS REDPATH: I don’t think so. COMMISSIONER: Just on this issue of the minimum number, our understanding is that one of the reasons for example that Camps Bay seems to have a very high proportion of policing on a per capita basis is that it is a very small police station and that the minimum number of police required to operate the Camps Bay police station or any police station is if I remember correctly in the region of 50 when you t ake into account the number of shifts you require for Vispol, the shifts you require for detectives etc., it’s hard to run and that’s roughly what the Camps Bay police station has, even though that wings it at a very high per capita and it does seem as if one would have to say well if we’re going to have police – and some small town would be the same (inaudible) and so on. MS REDPATH: According to my, yes so you will then get those anomalies when you apply the formula, some police stations serving very smal l populations but they need 18 people to work. COMMISSIONER: What you’re suggesting as I understand it is you take 149 or 150 police stations you say well let’s say that you require 50 members to operate each of those police stations, you work out what tha t calculation is and then you would say well we’ll take that 6 000 out of the overall and then we’ll allocate the balance on your basis. MS REDPATH: Ja. COMMISSIONER: And we may continue to review whether we need to have police stations in all of these pla ces but that’s actually how you do it so…(intervention) MS REDPATH: The problem is that all police stations are not equal so we have some satellite police stations which are only open for a few hours they in fact only require four people to operate. So you would have to do that calculation you know depending on the size and the functions offered. COMMISSIONER: Ja but I think we’re talking now about full police stations, captain police stations and upwards cannot operate with fewer than 50…(intervention) MS REDPATH: Yes and then you would see of necessity an upward allocation. COMMISSIONER: Yes and of course when you get to the bigger stations which would require more people presumably the formula would generate that out of population size and crime rate. MS REDPATH: Yes, yes so I mean the question you have to ask is if you get a very high upward adjustment as a result of applying the minimum number you’ve got to ask is it justifiable to have that police station in that area. COMMISSIONER: Of course. MS REDPATH: That then prompts that question. COMMISSIONER: Thank you. MS BAWA: I have no further questions. NO FURTHER QUESTIONS BY MS BAWA ADV PIKOLI: Would you know how much weight is attached to environmental design? MS REDPATH: Certainly there was a long lis t of environmental features that were taken into account the presence of water, the presence of open areas, the type of roads, various lighting, various factors like that. But my view on those things is that they all affect the incidence of crime so in a sense one is double counting if you look at those factors and takes into account crime. COMMISSIONER: Right thank you. I’m just wondering who would like to go first we’ve allocated 30 minutes to SAPS and 20 minutes to the Resources Centre, between you do you have a selection as to whether you want to go first? Mr Arendse do you have a view, would it be helpful for you to hear the LRC’s questions before you put questions or do you want to go ahead now? ADV ARENDSE: (Off mic) COMMISSIONER: Okay I think it’s Mr Bishop, 20 minutes but we are a little bit ahead of schedule so if you need a little bit extra you can go for it. MS BAWA: No, no I kept some for reply. COMMISSIONER: Oh you kept some for reply oh dear alright it’s very easy to start a fight. MR BISHOP: I’ll cut it as much as I can Commissioner. CROSS-EXAMINATION BY MR BISHOP MR BISHOP: Thank you Ms Redpath. Firstly I’d like to ask you whether you think this unfair allocation of human resources to the Khayelitsha station is part of the cause for the problems that we’ve heard about at this Commission, the high crime rates, breakdown in relationship between police and the community, other forms of inefficiencies and do you think that that’s part of the cause? MS REDPATH: I certainly think that the other e vidence that we’ve heard in the Commission around the terrible burden faced by detectives especially is certainly part of the problem the fact that there simply are not enough detectives to adequately deal even with the serious violent crimes which occur never mind the less serious crimes. That for me is a key indicator in undermining public confidence, if you have someone in your family murdered and the police are unable to deal with it expeditiously, efficiently due to lack of resources, then I would say that that’s definitely a factor which affects. I’m usually very sceptical when people say oh it’s a lack of resources but having done the number crunching I cannot dispute the fact that lack of resources is a huge factor in affecting the performance of p olicing in these three areas. MR BISHOP: You mentioned detectives would you say it’s also an issue with regard to visible policing? MS REDPATH: Certainly, certainly also an issue regarding visible policing, visible policing requires visible police and if they’re simply not there they’re not there and the absence of the physical presence would certainly have an impact on particularly policeable crimes, crimes which occur in the open and that’s something that I also used to be somewhat sceptical of the polic e impact on. However, my experience in Rhalashiwe showed me that police patrolling of hotspots such as football matches and fun events and just police awareness, having enough people there at the time when something is likely to happen does actually have an impact particularly on violent assaults which frequently convert into murder or other more serious incidences. MR BISHOP: Can I ask you from the various Tables you’ve supplied where it shows for example that Harare needs an extra 192 policemen it wasn’t clear to me what percentage of that would be detectives and what percentage would be visible policing. Would it be possible to provide those numbers to see how much of an increase, how much of the 192 is extra detectives and how much is extra visible pol icing? MS REDPATH: Yes it would be possible unfortunately I don’t have it here. I also made the point earlier that although I have applied the figure to, the adjustment to the detective figure ultimately it may not work to have a police station with a hugely inflated detective service and a very small visible policing component. So the final figures would then also be adjusted for rationality in terms of the spread between visible policing and detective services but the rational kind of formula theory be hind it is that we are accounting for the extra burden on detectives occasioned by reported crime. MR BISHOP: I accept that but it would still be interesting to see for example if there was a 200% increase in detectives and a 50% increase in visible policing. MS REDPATH: Yes. MR BISHOP: So could I ask if you could just…(intervention) MS REDPATH: I would estimate that the bulk of that adjustment would be from the detectives. MR BISHOP: For detectives. MS REDPATH: Ja. COMMISSIONER: Because you’ve provided us with the formula we can actually…(intervention) MS REDPATH: Yes you can work it out. COMMISSIONER: Exactly so…(intervention – general discussion) we look forward to the calculation Mr Bishop. MR BISHOP: I just want to ask a question about how the sort of f ormula that you’ve given us and the approach you’ve given us is different from the THRR that Brigadier Rabie was doing. As I understand it his formula doesn’t take into account the available number of police it’s just asking in a perfect world unlimited budget, unlimited number of members how many would we want for each station. MS REDPATH: Correct. MR BISHOP: Whereas yours is different. MS REDPATH: Yes. MR BISHOP: Yours is saying we’ve got X number of police how are we now going to distribute those. MS REDPATH: Yes correct. MR BISHOP: Between the stations. Could that be part of the reason why the formula that Brigadier Rabie is employing (a) has to take account of so many different factors and (b) might lead to slightly different – because the other thing is I understand the numbers you are using are the actual numbers not his ideal allocation numbers. MS REDPATH: Correct. MR BISHOP: Can you just talk about why you’ve taken that approach? MS REDPATH: Well my understanding is that the Provincial Commissione r is given a bulk number of police officers which then have to be distributed so I was answering the question if I were the provincial commissioner how would I then go about distributing the resources made available to me. I also think it was interesting to me that the actual allocation made to the Western Cape turned out to be very close to a per capita allocation in any event so this huge complicated formula applied at national level actually ended up for the province being close to a straight per capita allocation which was interesting to me for the province as a whole which I believe is an under allocation. COMMISSIONER: What’s interesting is that so do SAPS, on SAPS’ own figures the Western Cape is under resourced. MS REDPATH: Yes. COMMISSIONER: And they’re working to try and correct that so that suggests that their overall figures aren’t actually only about per capita because otherwise if everybody was working on a per capita you’d expect every province to produce that. MS REDPATH: No… COMMISSIONER: So they are obviously using other factors to take into account. MS REDPATH: Yes, I’m not sure if I’m understanding you correctly but if you were to just take the population of South Africa and look at the population of each province and allocate the resource s, that’s kind of what the Western Cape was allocated. COMMISSIONER: The 20 000. MS REDPATH: Ja approximately but applying something like my formula suggests we need more like 25 000 and SAPS is suggesting that their own formula suggests more than 20 000 b ut I don’t have that available. COMMISSIONER: But your formula is based on the available pool of SAPS people. MS REDPATH: The available pool of SAPS people at national level. COMMISSIONER: Ja. MR BISHOP: So your formula isn’t really a replacement for what Brigadier Rabie was doing that formula at national level it’s what the Commissioner should be doing once he or she has assigned a certain number of policemen from national is that right? MS REDPATH: My understanding is that Rabie’s formula was also being u sed to inform the allocation at provincial level so yes I agree with you it doesn’t replace determining the theoretical requirements. I also think that as a determination of theoretical requirements for the nation as a whole it doesn’t work either for the same reasons that there’s double counting and so on. MR BISHOP: Sure. MS REDPATH: I think it’s irrational to think that this is a blue sky project we know that there are limited resources at national level and you can’t work from a blue sky situation beca use then you get a situation where everybody gets 70% of what they say they need which is ridiculous so ja. MR BISHOP: But I mean in terms of sort of SAPS’ planning wouldn’t it be helpful for them to have an idea of this is ideally the number of police we want so they need to go and advocate for a higher budget employing more policemen they need to justify why…(intervention) MS REDPATH: Yes they need to adjust that as well and I think what needs to be looked at is I would look at just the functions which ar e provided making sure you have sufficient people for a police station of that size and nature to provide those functions and then to look simply – it’s very close to what I’ve suggested in reverse the number of people you’re policing and the crime rate and the actual incidence of crime which you’ll have to estimate using murder as a proxy. I think that when it comes to factors like square kilometres and so on that starts to affect things like the vehicle allocation which is a different question. MR BISHOP: Yes, one very small question as I understood your approach when you determined the number of police for administration that was also done on a per population basis I was just wondering wouldn’t it make more sense to do that on sort of the number of membe rs that you’ve already allocated for Vispol, detective and crime intelligence… MS REDPATH: That would also be given that the administrative burden would go up if you’ve got more detectives for example. That would also be a rational way of doing that however that would tend to reduce the number of, the allocation to Khayelitsha and Harare and Lingelethu West. MR BISHOP: Why is that? MS REDPATH: Because the crime rate is lower than it should be. MR BISHOP: The reported crime rate. MS REDPATH: The reported crime rate so the per capita allocation actually gives, is advantageous to Khayelitsha, Lingelethu West and Harare whereas a crime rate allocation is not which is why my formula actually results in them having slightly less than average. So if you’re using the figures which are partially determined by the crime rate, the reported crime rate as opposed to the incidence of crime you’re going to reduce the number of personnel slightly. COMMISSIONER: What’s the rational sensible approach? I mean I understand, we can’t argue backwards I understand that we have…(intervention) MS REDPATH: Yes so the rational sensible approach would be to ask the question what do those administrative personnel do are they supporting detectives as well as visible policing or are t hey merely serving the public and my perception is the majority of them are serving the public the detectives aren’t supported by administrative personnel. If they’re serving the public then you must do a per capita allocation. MR BISHOP: You said I mean some of these many factors that are in the THRR formula result in double counting. MS REDPATH: Yes. MR BISHOP: I was wondering if they don’t in some instances account for the gap between reported an unreported crime so that you might have a low reporting rate but we know that we’ve got all these factors that tend to lead to more crime so we’re trying to capture the degree of unreported crime does that make sense or not? MS REDPATH: It does make some sense but I would argue that it would be far more sensible to look at the gap between the murder, the reporting of murder and the reporting of other crimes in order to estimate the size of that gap. In my previous submission we looked at how if you take the – if you compare it to the Western Cape trends that cle arly there’s huge under reporting in Khayelitsha and Lingelethu West and Harare if you compare those trends and obviously it’s not an exact science but it does give an indicator of the extent of the gap in reporting. COMMISSIONER: One of the things that emerged in some of the other expert evidence and also in fact emerged from the General Shabalala report, what’s been called the General Shabalala report, the task team to respond to the complaints of the complainant organisations is the need to do regular barometer surveys as it were. In other words to do proper surveys of communities that are being policed and address certain things, one of them would be the reporting rate but others would be levels of trust and confidence in SAPS. Would that be a source o f being able to try and correct for the actual crime rate because…(intervention) MS REDPATH: Certainly you can do a victimisation survey the problem with victimisation surveys is you tend to need to have very, very high samples to capture crime because crime is actually a lot rarer than we think it is. So a sample of a thousand people is probably not going to adequately capture the true picture of crime you’re going to need to have a much bigger sample so for example the UK crime survey they have millions, they have a sample of millions in order to capture crime accurately. So unless you want to start going back in time and saying to your respondents have you experienced crime in the last five years and then you start getting into problems of telescoping, people including crimes from 10 years ago when they were actually only three years ago. So the bottom line is yes surveys are useful, victimisation surveys struggle to capture sufficient crimes in order to be able to estimate the true incidence of crime un less they have very large samples which in turn tends to be very expensive. COMMISSIONER: Did you see the Mthente Survey I can’t recall? MS REDPATH: Yes. COMMISSIONER: It was quite surprising what a high rate of victimisation…(intervention) MS REDPATH: Yes. COMMISSIONER: …that survey of Khayelitsha and also it endorsed the hypothesis that you had which was that there’s an under reporting of crime. MS REDPATH: Yes. COMMISSIONER: I think it was about 1 700 I can’t exactly remember the number now but it was a bout 1 700 respondents which was a little bit more than was needed to…(intervention) but it was interesting how much victimisation did turn up. MR BISHOP: Ms Redpath would it make sense in your formula or in some other similar formula to weight the types o f crime so for example you would as a matter of policy decide we’re going to send more policemen to where there are contact crimes than to where there’s a high rate of property crime? MS REDPATH: If you’re talking about visible policing or are you talking about detectives? MR BISHOP: Both. MS REDPATH: Certainly if we’re talking about detectives I would certainly – I think I even suggested it in my report that perhaps both murder and culpable homicide should be double weighted because there’s a lot more work that needs to be done with those kinds of crimes. But to begin to weight other crime types leads to a sort of moral quandary, are you going to, is highjacking the same as a rape, you know you start to get into the same problems which the THRR has got int o. At the end of the day every crime needs to be investigated so ja and if you start to value contact crime over crimes against businesses what does that mean it starts to become a very fraught exercise. But I certainly would agree that if you’re dealing with crimes where life has been lost that it would make sense to double weight those instances. If that were to be done it would certainly result in Khayelitsha and Harare having an upward adjustment of the number of resources. MR BISHOP: Last question Commissioner you mentioned your experiences in Rhalashiwe and that they were very successful in reducing crime, can you just describe briefly some of the methods that they employed that you think were effective in achieving that reduction? MS REDPATH: They were very simple methods it was a highly responsive police station which would react in a short amount of time when something was brought to their attention. They were highly aware of environmental factors such as lack of lighting, long grass etc., and the re was a relationship with the municipality to ensure that those were dealt with as quickly as possible. There was some frustration that it was longer than the police would have liked particularly with regard to street lighting and the proper use of crime intelligence. So identifying where the problems are, the hour and the days of the problems so yes that corner might be a hotspot on a Saturday afternoon but it’s not a hotspot on a Monday morning so really taking proper account of the detail of the crime intelligence and simply being responsive and being responsible to the public. What I was amazed about is that I was asked to do focus groups with members of the community and SAPS found it not difficult at all to amass a lot of people who were prepared t o come and talk with SAPS. There was clearly a strong good relationship between the community and with SAPS and that was obvious from the survey which preceded my experience that was carried out by another organisation and from the interaction that I had with ordinary people who were working with the police station. MR BISHOP: Thank you Commissioner no further questions. NO FURTHER QUESTIONS BY MR BISHOP COMMISSIONER: I should add the Commission is in possession of a statement which has only just been take n from retired Colonel Myburgh am I correct Mr Sidaki I know you’ve taken the statement who was the station commissioner at Rhalashiwe in this period indicating what methods have been adopted. Do you want to say anything further Advocate Sidaki? MR SIDAKI: Just that the statement was circulated to the parties on Friday. COMMISSIONER: So it is available to parties we at this stage don’t intend to call him but obviously if parties have got any comments or questions we could look into that thank you. Mr Are ndse? CROSS-EXAMINATION BY MR ARENDSE MR ARENDSE: Thank you Madam Commissioner. Ms Redpath you would have been through the evidence of Brigadier Rabie and you would have heard him testify that the methodology employed by him and his department was not perfect and that he was indeed open to new or fresh ideas and other proposals. He also mentioned that he was continuously developing the methodology that they are busy with, do you recall that? MS REDPATH: I didn’t actually hear the evidence I wasn’t present to hear the evidence but I did look at his evidence and I am aware that he made that point yes. MR ARENDSE: I meant that you would have read his testimony, the transcript. You also heard the Provincial Commissioner and, with respect, he didn’t admit that the provincial allocation was irrational he certainly stated very emphatically that police in the Western Cape are under resourced, do you recall reading that from the General Lamoer’s evidence? MS REDPATH: Yes. MR ARENDSE: You also heard the evidence of all the station commanders at Khayelitsha, Harare and Lingelethu West say that they are under resourced and they would require more personnel. MS REDPATH: Yes. MR ARENDSE: So it is on the evidence that those police officers on the ground here in Khayelitsh a and at provincial command are certainly aware of the problems of under resourcing of police. MS REDPATH: Yes but the point that I’m making is that even if your provincial allocation is less than you would desire there needs to be a rational process of allocating those resources fairly and whatever formula you apply you must test it for obvious anomalies in the way that I’ve suggested and when that is done to the actual resource allocation in the Western Cape there are indeed obvious anomalies. MR ARENDSE: I’ll get to that shortly. The figures that you have applied to your formula those would be the 2012/2013 figures is that right? MS REDPATH: They were figures supplied by Lamoer to the Commission on the number of police resources, police human resources p er police station the total was around 20 000. MR ARENDSE: I was going to refer to the national figure of 197 000 that had been for the total staff establishment for SAPS in 2012/2013 and the actual allocated posts of 116 000, were those the figures that y ou looked at? MS REDPATH: I used the most recent available annual report of the SAPS to do the calculations based on national figures and those figures include SAPS as well as Public Service Act employees. So the most recent available online annual report which would have been the year ending 2012/2013 ja. MR ARENDSE: 2012/2013, so what you have done in relation to the Western Cape was to distribute the posts actually allocated for the province. MS REDPATH: Yes so in my report here the first calculation I did was to say if we were distributing national resources to the provinces how much should the Western Cape get using my formula and I came up with an answer of around 25 000. Then you put that to one side, I then took the actual allocation to the Western Cape and said given that we actually only have this number of people how do we distribute that in a fair and rational manner amongst the police stations in the Western Cape and that’s the second part. MR ARENDSE: So on the second part can we accept that y our model and applying the formula that you apply is purely a distributive model? MS REDPATH: Yes. MR ARENDSE: You take X amount has been allocated to the Western Cape and you look at the census figure and the levels of crime and you distribute that in a way that you think is fair and rational? MS REDPATH: In a way that can be demonstrated to be fair and rational and is transparent. The principles underpinning that formula can also be applied to working in the other direction in terms of working out how ma ny people are needed but that’s not a calculation that I’ve done here. MR ARENDSE: Would it not have assisted us that you look at the underlying problems with the theoretical human resource requirement methodology applied that nationally and then cascade i t down to the provinces. Because now it seems to me you use a figure that comes out of the 197 000 that is used and the 116 actually allocated posts and you apply it to the Western Cape and it seems to import what you criticise as an unfair and irrational allocation. MS REDPATH: Certainly it’s easy to do the calculations with a higher allocation, my understanding is that the question was as Provincial Commissioner how should the Provincial Commissioner have allocated the resources. If you would like to ha ve the figures for how should the Provincial Commissioner have allocated resources of 25 000 instead of 20 000 that’s easily done by simply applying the formula to the larger figure. COMMISSIONER: Can I just ask on that can that just be done on a percentage basis, in other words would you just be able to say because the underlying formula will stay the same 20 000 of 25 000 is roughly 80% so you just add a percentage to each or do you have to redo the formula on all of them? MS REDPATH: I’d need to look at my formula more closely but to be safe I would do it, ja it’s the same figure that’s applied again and again so it would simply be an adjustment upward of about 25% as a rule of thumb. COMMISSIONER: Okay and that’s on the assumption as I understand Advocate Arendse’s question that in fact the 25 000 were allocated out of 197 000 nationally on the basis of the application of your formula at the national…(intervention) MS REDPATH: Yes. MR ARENDSE: You also know Ms Redpath that the Theoretical Human Resource Requirement (THRR) is what Brigadier Rabie described as the ideal in relation to all police stations. MS REDPATH: Yes. MR ARENDSE: I think he came up with a figure of 172 000 so 172 000 less actually allocated posts of 116 000 leaves you with approximately 50 000. MS REDPATH: Something like that I’m not sure what the actual allocation, I haven’t got them at the top of my head but yes so I understand that the actual is about 70% of the theoretical. MR ARENDSE: Yes it’s 70%, less 30% same thing. MS REDPATH: Ja. MR ARENDSE: So again on the police’s own methodology having regard to the national organisational structure they would like ideally approximately 50 000 additional police officers to be allocated to the police stations. MS REDPATH: Yes. MR ARENDSE: But ultimately we know that this is a question that is discussed in our national Parliament and that is where decisions are made presumably firstly at Cabinet level and then in Parliament that this is X amount national Treasury has allocated to you and you’ve g ot to work from that figure. MS REDPATH: So my submission would be that given the figures that national Treasury and Parliament decide to allocate to SAPS, SAPS must then go okay so the way we designed our policing cannot function properly with these figures so we need to change things, we need to change how we do things, we need to change the allocations. A rational response would be to say we cannot pretend that we have 100 000 and put 70% of people in there, if we can’t run a separate firearms unit in t his particular police station then let’s not do it we don’t have the numbers of people so there needs to be some rational response to the under allocation made by national Treasury. I am not convinced that areas other than Khayelitsha and Harare, the very well allocated areas I’m not convinced that they are under resourced it’s often the case that some areas may actually be over resourced. I’m not saying it’s, I don’t think that we can say that blanketly the whole of South Africa is running at 70%, it’s not like that. I think some areas may be slightly over resourced and some are severely under resourced like Harare. MR ARENDSE: That could well be quite a massive exercise to determine over time, I would have thought these things happen or these tasks are done at least once every five years which should give you a fairer picture of developments within that period. MS REDPATH: I think that whatever formula applied should be simple enough to make adjustments on even a yearly basis, South Africa is a constantl y dynamically changing country and if you’re waiting five years to make adjustments you’re always going to be behind. SAPS needs to be a lot more responsive to things that are, changes that are happening on the ground and there’s a part of Khayelitsha her e that didn’t exist five years ago and now it exists. It’s too late to respond every five years it needs to be a much quicker response. MR ARENDSE: That’s the point I was going to get to that in relation to Khayelitsha five years ago, and I speak subject to correction Madam Commissioner, we had one station where Khayelitsha Site B is at the moment and we had two satellite stations that have since become two full -blown colonel stations. MS REDPATH: Yes. COMMISSIONER: That’s more like 10 years ago. MR ARENDSE: Sorry 10 years thank you, 10 years ago we had one station subsequently two colonel stations and the figure grew from approximately over 200 police officers, 250 to the current figure of over 700. So certainly the number of police officers allocated to the Khayelitsha area has grown exponentially within the space of 10 years, I think more than any other part of the country would you agree with that? MS REDPATH: Well I know that similar adjustments have taken place in areas like KwaMashu in Durban where t here wasn’t a police station and now there is a presidential police station. Certainly these are commendable and deeply needed adjustments which have occurred in the building of new police stations, converting of satellite police stations into fully -fledged police stations and it’s what we would expect but it’s almost the minimum of what we would expect. There needs to be a constant adjustment and it’s not enough the under resourcing is, still 20 years after apartheid is still, it’s still unconscionable and irrational. MR ARENDSE: Now I’m not going to, I don’t have instructions to take issue with you on that you may recall that I have been interacting with Ms Bawa to in fact facilitate you consulting with Brigadier Rabie but I think your report came a bit too late for him he had been deployed to do some other work before the national elections. My instructions certainly are that certainly once the Commission’s recommendations are placed before the national Minister and the national Commissioner that at tha t point that engagement will take place. So what I put to you is a bit tentative and just based on me and my team’s assessment of the evidence and just ourselves looking at your report so that’s what my questions are based on. Now it seems to me to come back to the issue of under resourcing that the “problem” may also now be exacerbated with the building of – I don’t want to say imminent because it’s been imminent now for a while – of Makhaza where we heard the provincial Commissioner say well we’re going to have to take officers from other stations it may even be just close by Harare, Lingelethu West and Khayelitsha also to populate that station. MS REDPATH: Well my response would be it would be irrational to take them from Harare and Lingelethu West and Khayelitsha they should be taking from those stations which are relatively better resourced. I don’t think it will exacerbate the problem what it really means is that there’s fewer kilometres per police stations which theoretically makes visible policing e asier which means that it’s closer for ordinary people to access police stations, the people who live there. Yes you’re right there’s now another police station which must have its minimum allocation and which must be allocated but then don’t take it away from the people who are already under resourced take it away from the areas where there is more resourcing. Make an argument to national that actually we need more people, a bigger cut of the national pie that would be my response. MR ARENDSE: But we know from the evidence that that is what the station commanders in Khayelitsha have said that is what the provincial Commissioner has said that we need a bigger slice of the pie because we are under resourced so it’s not as if here in Khayelitsha and througho ut the province that plea has not been made to national. MS REDPATH: Yes I understand that but if the plea is falling on deaf ears that doesn’t mean that you continue with your unequal and irrational allocations of what you do have you still need to consta ntly test the allocations that you are making against per capita figures. Any formula that you apply you must test against a per capita formula and say look for the anomalies and correct those anomalies to the extent that it’s possible. I’m suggesting that that kind of step back of testing the formula with an objective per capita comparison has probably not occurred and has not been taken into account in making adjustments. MR ARENDSE: Ms Redpath is it not the case that your formula that you apply is far too simplistic it doesn’t take into account the organisational design of SAPS, it doesn’t take into account the different services that are rendered at national level, at provincial level, station level, cluster level, the overlapping of services for example crime intelligence and protection and security services certainly in terms of the organisational design is one that’s applied across national, provisional, station, cluster level and has not focused on particular stations? MS REDPATH: In fact if you read at the end of my report my recommendation is that in fact the structure of each policing station has a certain minimum number of people that are required to run those services and functions and that that should be a step which is taken first, allocate th e minimum number then take, subtract all of that minimum number from your total figure and then apply the formula. So indeed I do take some account of the type of stations, however I am not privy to the detail of which police station is a cluster police station and which is a satellite police station, how many people that – the minimum number that that police station needs to operate. So I was unable to do that full calculation but however it is a recommendation that I make so the figures in my formula are suggestive and the simplicity of the formula is actually an advantage anywhere in the world that you go the more simple a formula is, the more transparent it is the less likely you are to double count, to use factors which cancel each other out, to do al l sorts of things which are open to dispute, particularly when it comes around weighting factors. Does this factor count the same as this factor or must it be double weighted or triple weighted or quadruple weighted and once you start getting into those realms you can tweak your formula in a number of different ways to end up with the result that you want and unless you’re very transparent about exactly what your formula is with the full formula written out as I’ve provided here it’s not replicable by anybo dy else and it’s not transparent. You can get yourself into a lot of trouble and to return to my initial point whatever formula you apply do the per capita calculations afterwards and then see if obvious anomalies arise. If a place like Harare which clea rly doesn’t have the least burden in the whole of the Western Cape comes out at the bottom of your list your formula is wrong it is giving you the wrong answer. MR PIKOLI: I would just like you to expand on the constitutional issue that you raised in our report on the unfair discrimination on that allocation of resources as it compromises the right to a safe and secure environment. MS REDPATH: I used that merely as an introduction and to underline my approach. My approach was to ask what is the allocation, does it lead to an inequality which I believe it does and can that inequality be justified by showing that it is fair. In my view the formula alluded to by SAPS does not provide me with the confidence that the allocation is unequal but fair, no it’s unequal and it’s unfair in my view. MR ARENDSE: Now Ms Redpath what is unequal and unfair is that that was never a question or an issue that my clients were asked to address during the course of this Commission or in the evidence. MS REDPATH: I was merely outlining the approach I was taking I was trying to uncover what would be a fair allocation of resources and that is the approach that I was following because the Constitution guides us in whatever work as government, whatever work government undertakes must be guided by the Constitution including the allocation of resources. Consequently if we have unequal allocations which we clearly do we need to then find a way of making those unequal allocations fair. The per capita calculations show us that the allocations are unequal on a per capita basis so how do we then come up with a list of unequal allocations that is nevertheless fair and that’s merely the approach that I was taking. MR ARENDSE: But surely if you want to look at the issue of fair or unfair distribution you’ve got to look at it globally, in this case nationally, throughout the country and not isolate this province from all the other provinces? MS REDPATH: If we are looking at whether the allocation is made by national are fair then we look, we consid er their actions. If we are trying to uncover whether the allocations made at provincial level are fair then we must operate accordingly it depends what you are looking at at the particular time. My understanding is we were looking at the distribution on ce an allocation has already been made to a province. MR ARENDSE: You see Ms Redpath I understand and like the Commission I’m sure those who employed you – and I use that term loosely – to do what you’re doing we’re indebted to you for assisting and certai nly Brigadier Rabie is appreciative of the work that you’ve done and he certainly takes seriously what you suggest. But you yourself say what you’ve done is to make recommendations and what you say contains suggestions, my question to you is why are you so emphatic in criticising the police for allocating resources unfairly when my clients here, the police officers on the ground and the provincial Commissioner and Brigadier Rabie himself have acknowledged that more police officers are required at the vario us police stations and particularly here in the Khayelitsha area. MS REDPATH: I was unaware that I was being particularly emphatic but the point I was really making is that any formula which you apply must be tested against the per capita allocation which if we apply the actual allocations, if we compare those, if we do a per capita calculation on the actual calculations we are presented with a figure which suggests that the relative distribution amongst police stations in the Western Cape, particularly und er resourced Khayelitsha, Harare, Lingelethu West less so and in fact other township areas of the Western Cape and for me that is of concern. MR ARENDSE: Now we – no what I meant was you are far less emphatic today in your evidence than you are in the repo rt, in your written report. If I can step off that topic we also know that the police stations that are mentioned in your report that are better resourced like Table Bay Harbour, Cape Town Central, Camps Bay, Wynberg, Mowbray, Sea Point, Claremont, Woodstock, Rondebosch, Bellville, Maitland I don’t need to say it to you of all people that these are all police stations that would have been in the formerly all white group areas. MS REDPATH: Actual Table 9 gives the most resourced and actually interestingly we get some very small police stations like Suurbraak and Elands Bay which come out near the top as well as Leeu -Gamka, Graafwater, Laingsberg so I’m not sure which…(intervention) MR ARENDSE: No I was referring more to the sort of urban setting here in the greater Cape Town metropolitan area. MS REDPATH: Yes, in fact on my formula those police stations also come out better resourced primarily because the higher reported crime rate justifies the greater level of resourcing. Areas like Wynberg have a much high er transient population than other areas and consequently the reported crime rate goes up and so on my formula in fact the traditionally well resourced areas actually remain, ironically remain better resourced because of the higher rate of reported crime i n that area. So on my formula which I’m projecting at the moment Cape Town Central, Sea Point, Woodstock, Claremont, Wynberg, Stellenboch, Mitchell’s Plain they come up at the top of the list with the highest number of people per 100 000 justifiably in my view and transparently because all we’ve used is the population, the crime rate and the murder rate to determine those figures. So I’m saying that is a transparent and justifiable over resourcing (indistinct) to the average. COMMISSIONER: What you haven’t done which would be an interesting exercise and one again the Commission could deal with it because you’ve given us all the basics is to look at, to do a Table of which stations would get the most additional resources or…(intervention) MS REDPATH: Well I’ve got that. COMMISSIONER: Have you got it here? MS REDPATH: It’s the last Table I’ve given you the… COMMISSIONER: Table 11 is it? MS REDPATH: So I’ve given you the difference between the actual and what my formula suggests so Nyanga would require an addi tional 277 to reach my formula figures. COMMISSIONER: I mean what is worrying about that list it’s Nyanga, Harare, Kraaifontein, Delft, Guguletu, Mfuleni, Khayelitsha, Kleinvlei, Grassy Park, Lwandle, Belhar up to No. 11 and then shortly thereafter Mannenb erg, Bishop Lavis etc. This is very close to an apartheid list. MS REDPATH: It is that is what struck me and what concerned me deeply when I did these calculations. As I said I’m usually quite sceptical about arguments of under resourcing and often it’s actually not the case but having done these calculations and having thought through a rational allocation of resources it does seem that those areas are in fact relatively under resourced. If we look at who we would have to take away from… COMMISSIONER: So that’s at the bottom end of the list. MS REDPATH: That’s at the bottom end of the list. COMMISSIONER: So it’s Cape Town…(intervention) MS REDPATH: What’s interesting is that the areas which would lose actually lose fewer than – okay Cape Town Central we probably would need to adjust upwards because of the transient population but let’s look at Claremont. So Claremont would lose 78 but compare that to the 290 -something that the under resourced need so it’s actually small negative adjustments to most police stations, in fact in most of them we’re looking at minus 2, minus 3, minus 10, minus 12 so small takings away from the better resourced areas which would then be allocated to a small number of highly under resourced areas. MR ARENDSE: Now you accept that some of the stations you’ve mentioned like Claremont, Table Bay Harbour, Cape Town Central, Sea Point and so on that they are, the resources allocated to them is justified is that right? MS REDPATH: What I’m saying is that on my formula…(intervention) MR ARENDSE: Based on the transient…(intervention) MS REDPATH: Even on my formula those areas require greater relative resourcing because of the high reported crime rates which in turn is a result of the high transient populations coming in on a daily basis. So what I’m saying is you can come up with a list of unequal allocations which is nevertheless fair and that’s the point that I’m making is that you – I’m not suggesting that everyone gets exactly the same, that every police station must have 250 per 100 0 00 I’m not suggesting that. I am saying whatever formula you have which leads to a list like this where there are unequal allocations needs to be transparent and it needs to be demonstrated to be fair. MR ARENDSE: But would it be fair to take away from th ose stations that are justifiably resourced according to you? MS REDPATH: I’m saying that a somewhat greater allocation is justifiable but what I’ve indicated in the last Table is the number which would need to be taken away to make up for the under resour cing of the other areas. You see for some areas like Strand we would take away nothing according to my formula, Somerset West we would take away two, Simonstown we would take away 11 and so on. I agree that for Wynberg and Cape Town Central the high transient population we might need to make some adjustments there but even there, even in Wynberg we’re only taking away 130 compared to the 292 we actually need at the other end of the scale with the areas that are under resourced. So my argument is that we take away a small number from some areas to make up the shortfall in a few number of highly under resourced township areas. So most police stations in the Western Cape would need to lose a number, a small number of police resources, all of that added toge ther would then result in a big number being available for the most under resourced ones which are right at the top here Nyanga 277 needed; Harare 252; Kraaifontein 192 so I would say the top 10 or 11 whichever, a shortfall on my formula of 100 or more people would then be made up by smaller takings away from the other areas. The important point to note is that even Harare would still then have fewer than the average number per 100 000, they would still have fewer but it would be rational and justifiable a nd fair because we’ve now taken into – and Camps Bay and Wynberg and Sea Point they would still have more than the average per 100 000 but there’s a rational and transparent basis underlying it. COMMISSIONER: Sorry I just have two questions on this one is that what you’ve done is you’ve moved around the people in police stations so you haven’t actually used numbers of people who are at provincial level. MS REDPATH: No I’ve just provided figures of the number of people at each police station and I made a tot al out of that and then I distributed them. COMMISSIONER: Then the other thing that would have to be amended would on Brigadier Rabie’s evidence there is a minimum, he says 60 but in fact there are many police stations which have fewer than 60 but probably between 45 and 60 to run a 24/7 police station which is police policy. MS REDPATH: Yes. COMMISSIONER: So we’d have to look at some of those stations many of the smaller ones the Camps Bays, the Nuwerus, the Eendekuils(?) and so on would actually have to h ave that number you wouldn’t be able to take away from them in order to retain the 24 hour…(intervention) MS REDPATH: That’s correct the first step would be to allocate them but my argument is if that results in them having a way out of proportion per 100 000 figure then you’ve got to ask yourself does it need to be a 24/7 police station. COMMISSIONER: Yes I mean I think there are all sorts of considerations, if you’re a small town in the middle of the Karoo then you may need…(intervention) MS REDPATH: Yes you’ve got to have one police station. COMMISSIONER: Exactly but whereas if you’re Camps Bay it may be that you could actually manage with a satellite station. But you do accept that that would adjust these figures…(intervention) MS REDPATH: Certainly, certainly it would have to be taken into account. MR ARENDSE: Now Ms Redpath how practical is your model going to be if you say or suggest or recommend that this must be done on an annual basis firstly, and secondly when does a situation really stabilise whe re you say well Harare and Lingelethu West and Nyanga and all the other – it’s pretty clear from both the actual allocations under the current SAPS model and what you put up as a model that it’s the black and so called coloured areas that are under resourced quite heavily. When does the situation stabilise on your model? MS REDPATH: Well the situation stabilises when the external environment stabilises so at the moment we’re still seeing a great deal of dynamic change. In the Western Cape we are seeing ar eas grow, we’re seeing areas reduce in size. For example Muizenberg also comes up on the top of the list and that’s because of massive informal settlements that have suddenly arisen there so while the external environment is changing due to the creation of new informal settlements SAPS has to respond and I think every five years is too slow, way too slow and with a simple formula like this…(intervention) MR ARENDSE: Sorry I didn’t suggest or say every five I just thought that, I’m not an analyst like you at all I’m just saying that it seems to be that most analysts like you would tend to look at things over a four or five year period before coming to any kind of definitive outcome. MS REDPATH: It would make sense to me given that budget allocations are made yearly, given that everything is done yearly that this kind of calculation should inform such budgetary allocations which take place at the same time and so they should be done in advance of the national budget. We know that the national budget also has m edium term expenditure frameworks over five years so we can also project into the future, we can project growth in certain areas, we can do all sorts of things to enable SAPS to plan around such yearly changes. But to answer your question of when does it s tabilise, it stabilises when the population stabilises when things start to calm down, when the crime rate stabilises and we’re still seeing massive fluctuations in Khayelitsha and Harare especially of aggravated robbery and hijackings and those kinds of things. When those things stabilise then the formula stabilises everything stabilises things start to look similar year on year. But while the external environment is fluctuating SAPS has to respond unfortunately. COMMISSIONER: But looking at really what it seems your report is suggesting as an initial readjustment to give effect to basically a per capita allocation coupled with a legitimate adjustment for that based on crime rates. MS REDPATH: Ja. COMMISSIONER: And that in a sense that would probably have to take a couple of years to achieve but that after that the adjustment would only be as populations change which wouldn’t be as dramatic as what you’re talking about here. You are talking about that you would have to be alert to growing populations and so on. MS REDPATH: Well I would predict that the crime rate would also change, the reported crime rate is going to increase because now you’ve got more police resources people trust the police more they’re going to bother to report crime more so I would pr edict that for at least another 10 years you would actually see the reported crime rate going up in township areas. COMMISSIONER: You testified to that in the first phase that in a sense what you’d want to see is an increase in reported crime…(intervention ) MS REDPATH: Increase in reported crime paradoxically it sounds like a bad thing but actually it would be a very good thing and it would start to shift those stations further up on the resource list because the reported crime rate influences the resourcin g. So as you get more reported crime in those stations so there would be continual upward adjustment of the resources to those stations. On the other hand, the stations who are now going to lose some people might also find that they are unable to police, you know their crime rates might also be affected so we don’t necessarily know what’s going to happen there. So I would suggest that there would be quite a long period of fluctuation and adjustment, not purely on population, but also affected by the crime rate, reported crime rate. MR ARENDSE: Then Ms Redpath this adjustment process and reallocation process also has to take into account a whole myriad of police regulations especially labour regulations, the transfer of personnel etc., is it really practical to do this. That is perhaps why I suggested that one looks over a four, five year period that this would have to be done. MS REDPATH: I’m under the impression that the secondment to other stations was something that happened pretty fluidly and easily in SAPS and in fact it’s one of the causes of Khayelitsha being somewhat even more under resourced particularly in detectives. So yes while official allocations might take some time of adjustment certainly there could be an interim phase of secondment of people to take into account the adjustments which are necessary. MR ARENDSE: Now it seems to me Ms Redpath that your model also doesn’t take into account the various components of say for example visible policing. Visible policing is not just about police o fficers getting into a police vehicle and driving around and obviously in the hope of deterring people from committing crime or catching criminals. There are also other aspects there’s the community service centre, there’s the firearms section, there’s va rious other sections, custody management, the social aspect of the police. Now on your model for example if you reduce Wynberg or Cape Town Central from their current numbers you will end up with them not being able to perform court functions or accountin g functions, the cluster numbers will be affected. MS REDPATH: And that’s why I suggested that the first step before applying the formula should be to allocate the minimum number required for that station to offer the functions it legitimately provides. S o that’s the first step make sure that every station which offers those functions has at least the minimum to be able to do so it’s then the icing on top that we apply the formula to bearing in mind that we have to first take away those figures that have been allocated. It’s in that process that we might see that okay some stations perhaps we need to make the call that they no longer be a 24/7 station or they need to, you know there needs to be some adjustment. But contrary to what you’re saying I’ve sugg ested that as the first step make sure that the first allocation is so that the services at least can be provided. In terms of visible policing allocation, visible policing is all about interaction with the public all of those functions you’re talking abo ut you’re serving a particular public and so the size of that public must be the key driver of determining relative resourcing between areas. MR ARENDSE: So you’re not saying or suggesting that the Commission should take your formula and apply it to the We stern Cape policing and recommend that this is a fair and rational allocation of resources in the Western Cape based on current numbers. You’re saying that there is a further very, very important exercise that still needs to be…(intervention) MS REDPATH: I’d be happy to do that exercise if I had the available information, a list of all the police stations, what functions they offer and the minimum number of people required to offer those functions. It would be a simple matter to apply that formula and what I’m suggesting is an example of a fair method which as far as possible doesn’t double count and is rational and transparent. It still leads to an unequal distribution of resources amongst stations but in a rational and transparent way. MR ARENDSE: So wouldn’t it be premature to today criticise the allocation of resources as being irrational and unfair? MS REDPATH: No I don’t think so at all I think that the fact that Harare has 111 police personnel per 100 000 people in that area and Camps Bay has 959 I think that’s transparently a problem and the fact that all of the township areas tend to be in a similar situation on the current figures is something urgent which needs to be addressed. So I don’t think that’s, it’s not premature I’m simply asking the que stion is the current allocation fair and I’m saying no it’s not fair and I cannot find a rational basis for it, that’s simply the point that I’m making. Then I asked myself the question well is there a rational basis on which we could make unequal allocat ions and I’ve answered that question in the affirmative, yes there is as long as it’s rational and transparent and based on sound underlying theory and doesn’t have double counting and so on you can come up with an allocation which sees Wynberg and those places having relatively more people per 100 000 than Khayelitsha. Khayelitsha will still have less than the average but it will have massively more people than it does have now. MR ARENDSE: You see what you don’t do in your report is to say that the factors that inform the THRR are irrational and unfair, what you do do is to say that the information that informs those factors are suspect or can be suspect or subject to manipulation. So the model itself you don’t criticise as being irrational…(intervention) MS REDPATH: No I do criticise the model I say two things, I say (1) the factors can be inflated or deflated accordingly; (2) it’s impossible to take into account every factor in a rational way which does not result in double counting. The third thing I s aid is that most of the factors actually speak to factors which affect the crime rate, the reported crime rate and the actual crime rate. If that is the case then instead of doing a complicated calculation which is all of these factors which I might also add are sometimes controversially linked to crime, for example unemployment doesn’t necessarily lead to crime so let’s leave that to one side for the moment. What I’m saying is instead of looking at all the factors which supposedly influence crime just lo ok at crime, you’ve got the figures SAPS keeps very good figures on reported crime that is what detectives, the detective burden is dealing with reported crime simply use that instead and when you’re dealing with every other function you’re interacting wit h the public just use the population, the size of the population that’s what’s going to determine your workload. So I’m saying that those factors can be better measured by the reported crime rate if you - it’s far more rational to use crime rather than the factors which supposedly influence the crime as the basis on which to make the allocation. Look, I agree there are other factors which relate to the burden of policing so how difficult it is to get through a narrow passageway, etcetera, but I would still argue that that ultimately impinges on the crime rates and it’s much sensibler (sic) cleaner, more transparent, way of looking at the distribution of resources. MR ARENDSE: Ms Redpath, let me put it to you, like some of my other colleagues put it to other witnesses in another case that your model is too simplistic and doesn’t take into account the complexities involved in policing crime and having said that let me just run that off by saying that like you I’m also citizen and I’m also deeply concerned t hat it clearly indicates that our Black and so-called Coloured working class and poor disadvantaged areas still seem to be the brunt of these allocations but having said that, I think in your own evidence today you acknowledge that there are a number of ot her factors that need to be taken into account in the allocation of police resources especially personnel and that your model as much as it’s appealing and would appeal to populace who criticise the police that it’s too simplistic. MS REDPATH: I would disagree that it’s too simplistic, I think it does take into account a number of factors. I do agree that there are – there may be exceptions which would then have to be looked at on an ad hoc basis, for example, Cape Town Central but then there would have to be very, very careful looking at where you take resources away from to make up the figures at Cape Town Central. All I’m suggesting is that whatever method is employed – and this is an example of a method which I think is a very good method, very transparent, very clear, very rational. Whatever method is employed must be clear, transparent, rational, have a rational argument underlying it and it must have no obvious anomalies when you test the figures that you ultimately get out of that method against a per capita calculation and that’s the basis of my submission. MR ARENDSE: And perhaps just finally, Madame Chair, just on transparency, we know that the annual police report goes to the National Parliament and it’s tabled there and I’m not sure wheth er the word interrogate is the right word but there are some questions that’s asked about it and similarly in the Provincial Parliament, in the Western Cape Parliament and the Provincial Commissioner is asked to account and certainly is held to account and we know from the evidence here that he sent – or his office sent through to at the time the Chairperson of SCOPA, Mark Wiley, these figures and that’s where, you know, these anomalies were highlighted during the Commission but can you recall any questions being asked about the allocation of police either nationally in the National Parliament or in the Provincial Parliament as far as the province is concerned? MS REDPATH: I haven’t following Parliamentary processes that closely, I know that allocation of resources is generally controversial topic but what – it’s never been this transparent, you know, we’ve never had a lovely list of figures of exactly how many police personnel are in each police station and that’s – I think that’s part of the problem, is t he lack of the transparency. Also, if I were an ordinary Parliamentary person who was presented with theoretical formula my mind would go like this and I would probably switch off and I would assume that people are doing the right thing but when you do the per 100 000 calculations on the actual figures you see that the right thing is not being done and that’s the bottom line. COMMISSIONER: This touches on an issue which really does concern the Commission which is how could this situation have lasted 20 y ears into a post-apartheid, committed – I’m willing to assert, committed to undoing the harm of the apartheid with the systems of oversight we have in place? MS REDPATH: I think it is a question of obfuscation, often people don’t actually know what to do, don’t know the calculation to make, don’t know how to do the figures and I would quite readily believe that it’s not deliberate. COMMISSIONER: No, I understand that. MS REDPATH: Ja, ja. COMMISSIONER: But the question I’m putting is more the questio n that if you have the exercise of public power and public resources subjected to requirements of accountability, transparency and responsiveness, how is it that nobody could have picked this up? MS REDPATH: I don’t know. COMMISSIONER: I mean – okay, it is a failure of oversight. MS REDPATH: It is, it is indeed. COMMISSIONER: I mean, not only was it not picked up but in (indistinct) article published in a newspaper during the hearings of this Commission the Chairperson of the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee asserted that the allocations to the Western Cape were fair. A week later SAPS came before this Commission and said not only were they not fair, they were wrong. Now this is just not a functioning system of oversight it seems to the Commission. MS REDPATH: No, no. If I can provide some insight into oversight at the provincial level, I did a study some years ago and what became very clear out of that study is that the people who were mean to exercise oversight were politically junior to the people who were running the ministries and it was very difficult for them to ask difficult questions and that was part of the problem of oversight of those Provincial Portfolio Committees in the North West and Free State and so on. Ja. COMMISSIONER: W ell, we’re looking at issues of oversight as the week progresses. MS REDPATH: Okay. MR ARENDSE: Now given – and I just speak for myself – I would like to think that one wants to apply common sense but it’s been a pretty challenging – to use a typical South African word, a challenging experience working through your report and trying to figure out what it all means. MS REDPATH: I apologise. MR ARENDSE: So I take my hat off to you and, you know, good luck in your engagement with Brig Rabie, but having said that and I think the Commissioner presiding has rightly said that in 20 years this seems not to have been questioned at all. How do you propose this process becomes more transparent? Must it be done – and I’m not being facetious, must it be done in public at the City Hall or how must it be done because we also know that the Provincial Commissioner at the end of the day is given an allocation from National but he has the responsibility under the SAPS Act to then do his own allocation in the province. MS REDPATH: Exactly, exactly. MR ARENDSE: So Rabie and his staff sit in Pretoria, they do the THHR and then National Treasury does the allocation and it’s approved in Parliament, now it comes to the province, must each Provincial Commissioner sit and now look at each station, look at the crime rates, look at the population figures and other factors and then do the reallocation and how is that done transparently? MS REDPATH: Well, I think the beauty of a formula like mine is it’s a relatively simple formula to apply, it’s not difficult to apply but I think the problem comes when you then look at the results and say okay, does this actually work station by station and that’s – this would – my formula would be the guide, firstly starting off with allocating the minimum number then applying the formula and then you get the figures. Then you go and compare that to what pertains at the moment and that’s where the toing and froing will then take place and I’m not sure the best way to do that toing and froing but as long as whatever adjustments are made which depart from the formula are justified and it’s clear that if you’re adding to Sea Point you’ve got to take away from somewhere else and where are you taking away from? And that needs to be closely justified per haps in tablings in the Provincial Parliament, I don’t know. MR ARENDSE: Or is it perhaps not a policy issue where you simply say look, more police must be allocated to where there are higher levels of crime and a denser population? MS REDPATH: Well, that’s essentially what my formula does is it takes into account a percentage of the personnel which is the detective service component which is determined by reported crime but the problem with that, as I’ve explained earlier, is that in relation to populat ion, areas like Khayelitsha, Harare, etcetera, have a lower rate of reported crime than expected given their population size, so that would tend to under -resource those compared to the average and I’m saying that’s okay while that situation persists and I’m saying that that’s going to automatically adjust over time as the great resources the better detective work encourages people to report crime more, the reported crime rate will go up and the allocations to those areas will slowly go up and eventually may be in a thousand years everyone will have the same allocation, but that’s the general process that I envisage. So I’m saying that there are circumstances in which it’s actually justifiable for Wynberg to be relatively better resourced than Khayelitsha and my formula actually comes out with that result but I’m saying that it’s rationally justified by looking at the work that has to be done by police and the fact that actually comparatively speaking they’ve got a lower reported crime rate than expected becau se people are not reporting crime whereas the areas like Wynberg have a higher reported crime rate than expected because they have a high transient population coming in every day to work and that bumps those figures up. So it’s rational, it’s justified. In fact a lot of people who live in Khayelitsha probably work in Wynberg and they also deserve protection when they’re in they’re in their working environment. So ja, what I’m saying is that a formula like this is fair and rational and transparent and if you check it against per capita figures doesn’t make one too uncomfortable and the policy could be the policy that you’re suggesting would be to be guided by a formula like that and any deviations would have to be strenuously and clearly justified and rati onalised. COMMISSIONER: Well, it would fit with the Section 12(3) power afforded to the Provincial Commissioners which is to allocate resources within the province and I suppose that what you would say is that each year the Provincial Commissioner would use this as a guide and then would say well, actually, I do feel I need more there or there. MS REDPATH: Yes. COMMISSIONER: And what would be something for which that Provincial Commissioner would be held accountable. MS REDPATH: Yes. COMMISSIONER: When he or she …(intervention) MS REDPATH: Making that decision. COMMISSIONER: Went to the Provincial Parliament and said this is in fact how I’ve done it and this is why I’ve done it and there would be a relative, I would imagine, respect and deferra l to that as long as it didn’t look like it at patterns of, you know, either class or race discrimination at its heart. MS REDPATH: Yes. MR ARENDSE: Thank you, I’ve got no – thank you, Ms Redpath. MS REDPATH: Thank you. NO FURTHER QUESTIONS BY MR AREN DSE COMMISSIONER: Ms Bawa. RE-EXAMINATION BY MS BAWA: Ms Redpath, I put to you and I want to place this on record so that it’s correct, the PC actually agreed with your view and your rationality and this comes out of the evidence of the PC on page 6603 and 6604 of his transcript where Adv Hathorn put to him: “General, my sense is that there’s something fundamentally irrational about the way that the RAG or the THRR, as it’s now termed, is calculated. If it produces results such as it does comparing Lingelethu West with Claremont are you in agreement with me?” To which the General replied: “I’m in agreement. I mean, that’s what explained just now, Chair.” So it was in that context that I said to you that the General agreed with you when you say that the system is irrational. Let me also draw something else to your attention. During the course of the evidence we were alerted to a project 6 which the SAPS has identified as the six poor performing stations and to which certain remedial measures were going to be put in place to improve the condition that those six stations. Would it surprise you that those six stations are Harare, Lingelethu West, Khayelitsha, Philippi East, Guguletu and Nyanga, four of those six fits into the top seven of your schedule of being the most under-resourced by human resources? MS REDPATH: Ja. MS BAW A: The other two is at number 34, Philippi East and Lingelethu West is at 55. So there is a correlation between SAPS’ own investigations as to what’s our poorest performing st ations and what you’ll find as being your worst resource in terms of human resources. Now we come to this mathematical formula which you say is required for actually making that determination. Now I’m very green as far as stats is concerned, it’s been m any years since I’ve last tried something, but in a letter of the 17 March we actually asked for this mathematical formula that underlined the THRR. We didn’t get the response. When Brig Rabie came to testify the question was asked in evidence – in fact I see it at page – I had the reference to it a minute ago – just give me a second? Anyway, he then – his proposition was the following that we were given this formula in this THR document which was attached to his affidavit. Judge O’Regan then said to him well, explain it to me and he said well, do you want me to go through this whole document? And then what he did was, he took detective services and he then explained to us by way of example how the number on detective services was calculated on the THRR formula and his further proposition was, well that’s what we actually do for every sector and then we put it all together and that’s how we get our number. Now am I understanding that wrong? Should there then be another formula for purposes of calculati ons? MS REDPATH: I think what you’re describing is how they arrived at the theoretical human resource requirements. MS BAWA: Ja. MS REDPATH: Which is what is then proposed to treasury but I would argue that that process must also be flawed. If it i n fact results in the RAG, which I believe it does, which also puts Khayelitsha and other such areas at the bottom of the list. So I’m saying that whatever formula you adopt tested against a per 100 000 measure, whatever formula you get the results that a re spewed out by that figure need to be tested in a common sense way, doesn’t actually work in reality and I think it’s pretty clear that whatever it is they’re doing, it’s not working. COMMISSIONER: As I understand it, it’s not a formula, it’s basically a series of criteria. MS REDPATH: Okay. COMMISSIONER: Which are then – so say, for example, if I just look at what Brig Rabie says, say for example you have an influx of commuters in the area then there’s one post for every 10 000 commuters, so that’s say 5 posts. Then if you have population density you’ll get one post for every so many people, now there will be 10 people. MS REDPATH: No, it’s still a formula, it will still be turned into a formula, ja. COMMISSIONER: Exactly, I mean, it is a formu la but it’s series of additions. MS REDPATH: It’s an if formula, ja. If under five then one, if above five then two. COMMISSIONER: And the most the way it was significantly little added for the number of informal settlements. So in fact how it worked was you got an additional waiting up to a maximum of your area being 10% informal. Well of course we know in Khayelitsha we’re talking about 50% informal. MS REDPATH: Ja. COMMISSIONER: So in fact it goes an additional amount for 2.5% informal, 5% informal, 7.5, 10 and then everybody over ten is …(intervention) MS REDPATH: Is weighted in the same way. COMMISSIONER: Absolutely not rational (inaudible – speaking simultaneously) MS REDPATH: And if they’re using the number of informal settlements an d disregarding the size that’s also problematic. COMMISSIONER: It’s as a proportion of your population …(intervention) MS REDPATH: Okay, of your total. COMMISSIONER: So if 10% of your population are living in informal area then you get that weightin g but if there are 30% of your population …(intervention) MS REDPATH: Or 40 or 50. COMMISSIONER: You’ll get no more than the people who were getting 10%. MS REDPATH: Ja, that alone is irrational. COMMISSIONER: Worrying. MS REDPATH: Ja. COMMISSIONER: So that how it works and my understanding was that we got all of that data but the …(intervention) MS REDPATH: But not in one formula that you can then – you yourself replicate the data. MS BAW A: So when you effectively say you find it irrational you’re actually saying that the THRR which gives rise to this …(intervention) MS REDPATH: Certain figures. MS BAW A: What you call blue sky figures and then we must aspire to this blue sky is irrational? MS REDPATH: No, I’m saying that there are a nu mber of problems with the THRR itself with issues that the judge has raised around things like threshold numbers below which that then you add another person for this and you add another person for that, etcetera, etcetera, I think it’s almost impossible t o take account of all such factors which would be relevant, that there are problems with weighting. Effectively the 10% thing is a weighting thing, you’re saying that populations with 20 or 30% are weighted equally, so it’s all about the weight that you give to each of the factors, so I’m saying there’s problems with the theoretical building in the first place, I’m saying there’s problems with the figures that it results in and when you test them, per 100 000. So I’m saying two things. MS BAWA: But in saying that, if what goes in is problematic. MS REDPATH: Yes. MS BAWA: Than what comes out. MS REDPATH: Of course. MS BAWA: Can’t be right. MS REDPATH: Ja, what I’m saying, even if you got your unemployment rate exactly right, you had the exactly correct proportion of the population which is living in informal settlements you had all of those things, the exactly correct information, I would say you would still get garbage on the other end. MS BAW A: Exactly and that’s because of all the other fact ors that they take into the account, the weighting, the …(intervention) MS REDPATH: Or that you are double – some factors are double and that they are all actually speaking to the same thing which is the crime rate or the burden of the population or what ever, so I think they take into account population density at some point whereas population already gives you a part of that story. So it’s really almost impossible to come up with something that is not open to some sort of criticism when you go into that level of detail. MS BAW A: Can I then take you to this question of transparency? There is accountability to Parliament annually and the Commissioner has already highlighted the difficulties with the Portfolio Committee and there’s some accountability to the Provincial Parliament. The difficulty I have had is that in the public domain the RAG has never been disclosed and when I say the RAG I mean the data which National provides to province which shows I’m giving 60 people to station X and those 60 peopl e is based on that rank and that’s what province gets and that makes up the total component which is given to province. That information has never been provided in the public domain. In fact, the Commission itself requested that information and was told that they will not be provided to the Commission because the data in relation to the non-Khayelitsha station doesn’t fall within the province’s mandate. So are far as you’re aware, that information does not appear in the public domain either before Parlia ment …(intervention) MS REDPATH: The only figures I saw were the RAG figures for the three Khayelitsha areas and I think a few others, that was it. MS BAWA: Few, that we were asked …(intervention) MS REDPATH: But not for the whole of the Western Cape . MS BAWA: Right and not for the whole of the Western Cape or not for the whole of the country does that appear in an annual SAPS report or in any report. MS REDPATH: No. MS BAW A: In fact the province themselves came to complain as the oversight body, we repeatedly asked for it, we were told by Province go and ask National for it. I don’t want to get into that debate but – so your recommendation as a first step of transparency is that – if I understood the exchange you had with Adv Arendse is that th ose figures need to be disclosed publicly. MS REDPATH: Yes so that – well, because clearly SAPS is not testing them itself for objective rationality so it’s up to the oversight people to do that. Ja, so that people who have the job of exercising oversig ht can see whether the unequal adjustments which there inevitably will be are nevertheless fair and rational. MS BAWA: If I take it further I think it was Brig Rabie, but I stand corrected, it’s at page 5341 of the transcripts. We were told that the min imum number to operate a 24 hour station was approximately just below 60. Now rough calculations of roughly 150 stations, that’s probably 9 000 out, so when you’re saying over and above the minimum number that SAPS says they need to operate the station, bear in mind the number of their stations operate below 60. You’re effectively saying your formula must be applied to the remaining thousands that’s there in the actual calculation. Do I understand that correctly? MS REDPATH: Sorry, I’m not following. MS BAWA: Sorry, I’m …(intervention) MS REDPATH: I’m saying – look, I would also question that minimum of 60 before we go any further, I would have a very clear and rational basis for determining the minimum number of a 24 hour police station first, then you give everyone that number first and where it occurs that some stations now have more than they should have on a per capita level, that adjustment has to then take place. MS BAWA: And that would depend on whether it’s a captain station, a colonel station or brigadier station, whether it’s an accounting station …(intervention) MS REDPATH: Yes, all the way down to satellite police stations with, you know, limited opening hours, they would all have different numbers that would need to be allocated as a minimum. Those so-called minimums would also have to be interrogated closely. If they are totally unachievable then SAPS needs to make a plan. MS BAW A: There was this exchange about potentially province needs to ask for a bigger slice of the pie and t he response from Adv Arendse was well, in fact that has been done and there has been an allocation of 668. When the PC testified and this is maybe one of the administrative things that’s fallen through the crack, when the PC testified and that’s at page 6 506 of the transcripts the question was asked where’s the 668 going to? His evidence was that it’s already been allocated, he couldn’t tell us where and it was going to be indicated to the Commission by SAPS as to whether any of those was going to be allocated to Khayelitsha. I think that’s one of the administrative things that we’ve forgotten to follow up on. But it does seem that if you are getting more people and you’re not allocating it to those who are worse resourced then there is still something i rrational about the way you’re doing it. MS REDPATH: There’s still a problem, yes. MS BAWA: Right. Now there is merit in following an approach whether it’s termed simplistic or not and the one thing that concerns me about your approach is when you start with a tangled web on policy and you pull one string there’s a whole lot of other strings that affect that and you can’t actually look at human resources in isolation because if you’re looking to increase Harare with 252 people and you’ve actually got nowhere to put them in Harare. MS REDPATH: Exactly. MS BAW A: And whereas you can say you’ve got currently – you’re adequately resourced with vehicles at Harare, the moment you put 252 there you’re looking at vehicles for 252 and you’re looking at a my riad of other things, it’s not simply a question of moving people around. You would accept that this cannot be done in isolation and the moment you embark on a project like this you actually have got to have an integrated approach to bringing about – let’s for the sake of a lack of a better word, a transformation in the way SAPS resources in its entirety in the province is utilised. Would you accept that? MS REDPATH: Certainly, certainly, may even indicate to you that need another police station, you kn ow, that actually you’re ending up with a police station with 800 people, it’s impossible to manage. So when you get to those very big figures it’s an indication that actually we need another police station to take up that slack. MS BAW A: A last question. When we talk about another police station and we talk about Makhaza, your response was well, when you man Makhaza you can’t take away from Harare, Khayelitsha and Lingelethu West. You would, however, do that if your per capita reduces as a result of M akhaza. In other words, that stands to reason on your formula. MS REDPATH: Yes, yes. MS BAWA: That’s not what you’re saying, right? MS REDPATH: Yes. MS BAWA: Okay. I have no further questions and it’s half past. NO FURTHER QUESTIONS BY MS BAWA MR PIKOLI: Just one thing. Earlier on in your report you make a passing reference to VIP protection cost. MS REDPATH: Yes. MR PIKOLI: What would you want the Commission to make of this? MS REDPATH: I just didn’t know what to do with the figures that relate to protection and security so – because the way I understand it is they’re very specifically allocated to particular people, to particular functions and they are not necessarily spread out amongst all the police stations. So I took them out when using the national figures to determine the distribution at police station level because I’m saying that those will not be distributed at police station level they’ll be in special protection units looking at parliamentarians, the president, etcetera, etcetera. But what I wanted to point out is that it comprises 12% - sorry, not 12%, a relatively – quite a – 6 363 people that we’re using to protect our important people and so there’s a related question, is that rational? But I don’t go into detail on that issue. COMMISSIONER: Well, thank you very much indeed, Ms Redpath, for your report. MS REDPATH: Pleasure. COMMISSIONER: It’s been most helpful to us, you may now stand down. MS REDPATH: Thank you. WITNESS EXCUSED