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Police Minister Bheki Cele. Image: Gallo Images / Darren Stewart
- Police Minister Bheki Cele warned officers to show exemplary behavior, in uniform and out of uniform.
- An off-duty police officer was stabbed and killed in a shebeen in the early hours of Wednesday morning.
- Cele also said that the police had to be more sensitive when women came to report crimes.
Police Minister Bheki Cele urged police officers to maintain a higher standard of ethics than the average citizen.
The minister made this appeal after a policeman was stabbed and killed in a shebeen early Wednesday morning.
“There are things that human beings do, but there are things … that [people do that] you can’t be a part of, “Cele said Wednesday.
He was speaking in Port Elizabeth, where, together with the provincial commissioner, Lieutenant General Liziwe Ntshinga, and senior management, he evaluated the effectiveness of the police “Safer Seasons” plan for the holidays.
Cele was direct with the officers, saying the job demanded more of them than the average South African.
He said that their behavior, in and out of uniform, had to be exceptional and respectful.
“Why not [you] respect your organization? Why don’t you respect yourself and your colleagues? You cannot be sitting in the shebeen and then you will be … killed there. He knows he’s vulnerable, but he doesn’t respect his organization or the rest of his colleagues either. “
He mentioned the shebeen after an officer, who was stationed in Mossel Bay and on vacation in the Eastern Cape, was allegedly killed at 1:45 a.m. in Nozukile Kobe Shebeen, Qibira, following a conflict with a group of men on Wednesday.
He was stabbed in the chest with a sharp instrument, said ministerial spokesman Lirandzu Themba.
“They took the deceased [to hospital] with private transport, but they found that he was dead. “
The officer was off duty.
‘It’s not your job to be fashion consultants’
Cele was also tough on the officers when talking about gender violence.
He said that no woman should be turned away from police stations.
“When a woman comes to report abuse by her husband or boyfriend … do not send that woman back home to negotiate. It is not your job to send an abused woman and child, complaining and suffering back to negotiate.
“Your thing is to go and arrest that person. It’s not your job to send them back. They come for the first time, they come for the second time, they don’t come for the third time because you keep sending them to negotiate.
“Why doesn’t she come the third time? She is dead, they have killed her. She has been murdered by that abuser.”
Cele stressed that women, children and the elderly, in particular, had to be protected by the police.
“You have an extra job when it comes to women’s issues.”
He also said that the police should not judge women by what they wear.
“It is not your job to look at women’s skirts, you are not a fashion advisor. Look at the woman, empathize, sympathize and act.”
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