court gangster hits
18 April 2008
Things are clearly a lot more difficult now, what with highly trained gangs of professional hitmen, armed with police uniforms, rifles and inside information.
The gang that hit the Johannesburg High Court this week stole documents relating to a R46m robbery at First National Bank a couple of years ago as well as documents relating to charges of attempted murder, fraud and defeating the ends of justice against Ekurhuleni police boss Robert McBride.
The content, on its own, raises disturbing questions. But the manner of the theft is, if anything, even more intriguing. One can’t help wondering if the drama at the Johannesburg High Court this week is telling us some good things about the prosecution service, which, in any event, says it now backs up all the court documents electronically — so stealing the paper copies is no way to get your case canned. But equally, there can be no doubt that the incident (and another at the Jeppe Magistrate’s Court just a day later) says some very bad things about the courts and, probably, about the police.
One would, at least, expect that our courts would be properly secured. Clearly they are not, making life risky and difficult for the lawyers who have to work in them and even more unlikely that cases will be competently prosecuted. But securing the courts (or other key installations) against highly organised criminal gangs is not just a matter of posting security guards or even police. Preventing robberies of this sort requires painstaking detective work that aims to uncover the activities of organised gangs before they strike, not after. Our police service is failing at the investigative work needed to curb organised crime.
The drama at the court served just to highlight that yet again.