NEWS
Durban woman cop experiences violence from criminals and her own department, Noseweek, March 2007

DURBAN METRO BLUES Gunshot victim: Cherise Cox WHEN CHERISE COX was called to a crime incident in Voortrekker Road, south of the Durban CBD she could hardly have been surprised to find herself being shot at. She was a cop after all – a member of the Durban Metro Police Service Dog Unit – and this was a hijacking.
What might have surprised her, though (if she’d had time to be surprised in the seconds before a bullet tore into her stomach), was that the gun that brought her down was police issue.
Cox and a colleague arrived at the scene to be confronted by four well-armed, highly trained and extremely violent criminals – armed robbers that the SAPS Serious and Violent Crimes Unit had been hunting for years.
Detective Inspector Bruce McInnes of the SAPS Serious and Violent Crimes Unit takes up the story: “We’d received a tip-off from an informer, Vulile Blose, that a cash-in-transit vehicle was going to be robbed near Southway Mall in Rossburgh. The van was going to be rammed off the road prior to being robbed and a Beemer or a Merc would be hijacked for that purpose.”
Simphiwe Shezi, alleged mastermind of the gang, doesn’t have a long criminal record. He’d been arrested only once for hijacking a truck – but before he could be brought to trial the complainant and witness vanished.
Nobody knows precisely what happened to them, but McInnes knows his informer’s fate. Blose’s corpse turned up in an abandoned car after he snitched about a second robbery the Shezi gang was planning.
“He’d been bludgeoned to death with a baseball bat. They’d tried to make it look like a car crash,” says McInnes.
WHEN COX AND her partner ran into the Shezi gang, the criminals were hijacking an old-model Merc – said to be their car of choice for ramming cash vans.

The cops leapt out of their car firing at the four armed men. The pint-sized Cox was wearing a bulletproof vest – but not a Metro Police one. In a cost-cutting measure the Ethekweni Council hadn’t bought vests small enough for a 1.5m female.As Cox stood up to fire over her car at one of the hijackers across the road, her vest hiked up – and a bullet ripped into her navel, tearing through her flesh and cutting her femoral artery – an injury that usually means a victim will bleed to death within five minutes.
Cox was saved by an ambulance – literally around the corner. Paramedics stemmed the bleeding and raced her to St Augustine’s Hospital Trauma Centre.
It was when investigating cops secured the crime scene that they discovered that the Shezi gang had been armed with two Metro Police pistols – one of them the gun that shot Cox.
McInnes rushed to the scene when he realised his man had been nabbed. Shezi, desperate to cut a deal with the cops, sang like the proverbial canary.
After shopping the rest of his gang, Shezi told McInnes that the Metro Police guns had been bought off two bent Simphiwe Shezi cops.
Not quite the story the pair of cops spun. Thembinkosi Mthethwa and Sthembiso Zimu, in their official statement of 30 July 2003 reporting the loss of their firearms, claimed that three armed men had robbed them of their weapons.
MTHETHWA WENT ON to say the men sped off in a white VW Golf with registration ND 527 890.

However he failed to describe any of his robbers or even the clothes they were wearing, despite having been face to face with them.
The number plate he gave belonged to a Golf reported hijacked to the SAPS two weeks before the alleged robbery. One sceptical detective wonders why, after being robbed, the pair didn’t follow the vehicle and report the incident over their police radios.
Someone else thought of that too. Zimu’s statement has an addition, made in a different handwriting, which adds that the robbers also took their Metro Police car keys.
Zimu did not sign his statement. He, too, neglected to describe the gun thieves, despite his claim that they had come up close enough to search him.
Amazingly, the pair also did not report anything other than their guns being taken – despite being in possession of cell phones and portable radios.
TWO WEEKS AFTER this alleged robbery, Cox was shot and maimed with the Tanfoglio pistol issued to Mthethwa.

Sthembiso Mnyando, the man who maimed her, was shot dead on the scene by Cox.
Shezi was arrested on the scene and took detectives to his gang’s lair where they recovered another Metro Police gun – the one that Zimu allegedly sold to Shezi’s gang.
But when McInnes passed on the information that Shezi was “singing” and suggested the Metro Police speak to him preparatory to having another chat with Zimu and Mthethwa, the suggestion was ignored.
McInnes provided a sworn affidavit that Shezi had claimed that the Metro Police officers had sold their duty firearms. This he handed to Cox, who handed it to Inspector Dieter Meyer – a Metro Police officer.
Serious and Violent Crimes Unit detectives have heard nothing more from Meyer.
When noseweek interviewed Shezi in the holding cells during an appearance in the magistrate’s court, the alleged robber confirmed that nobody from the Metro Police had been to see him – although he is willing to give them a statement. The more he is seen to help the authorities the better it looks for him when he comes to be sentenced on the several counts of armed robbery and attempted murder he is facing.

When noseweek asked Durban municipal manager Dr Michael Sutcliffe why his police had been so remiss, he said it was felt that it would “not be in the interests of justice” to question Shezi and his accomplices about his claim – as they are awaiting-trial prisoners in a serious criminal case.
Former Durban city councillor Lyn Ploos van Amstel, a former senior public prosecutor in the Pinetown courts was shown the documentation relating to the probe of Cox’s shooting.
“The facts are sufficiently suspicious that the policemen need to be cross-examined in great detail. If you are on-duty in a marked vehicle and someone comes waving a gun at you demanding your firearm, I would have expected that you would draw your firearm and shoot. A member of the public making a similarly absurd claim would be charged with negligently losing his gun.”
SHE ALSO OBSERVED that, if the case had been thoroughly investigated from the instant the guns were reported stolen, it was possible they would have been recovered and the suspects arrested before they maimed Cox.

At the time the Serious and Violent Crimes Unit recovered the two missing guns, the Metro Police had not even listed them as stolen on the SAPS computer system. This also might have helped lead to the guns being recovered before Cox was shot.
Sutcliffe now says he will make the results of his probe into firearms control in the Metro Police known. Don’t hold you breath.
In 2004 councillor John Steenhuizen asked for the results of an audit into the firearms controlled by Metro Police to be made available to council. In proposing the motion he said that around 150 guns were missing from the Metro Police armoury.
The ANC caucus in council voted unanimously not to make this audit public – ensuring the public never got to know how many lethal weapons crooked cops have put in the hands of criminals. Despite the ANC majority’s attempt to keep the audit from councillors, noseweek has learned some interesting details about it.

IN 2003 METRO Police armourer Warren Burgess was tasked with conducting an audit of the Metro Police armoury.
Described as a perfectionist and a stickler for detail by his colleagues, Burgess discovered nearly four dozen guns had vanished from the Metro Police armoury.
He found that in some cases cops had lost two or even three handguns – without facing a disciplinary inquiry. He also discovered that many of the guns had never been reported missing to the SAPS.
Burgess’ report of the missing and stolen guns is filed at Durban Central Police Station (case number 273/04/2004).
Days later Burgess, a reservist with the SA National Defence Force, was arrested and charged with being in illegal possession of army property. The case against Burgess collapsed “in abject and complete ridicule” according to a prosecutor at the Durban courts.
The Metro Police had charged him with having unlicensed shotgun barrels – which turned out to be old pieces of steam piping. The Durban corporation’s men in blue also charged Burgess with being in possession of stolen military goods – which turned out to be equipment the SANDF had formally request he store in his strongroom. It gets worse.
THE DURBAN METRO Police record of missing guns lists an SAPS case number against each missing firearm. These case numbers are provided by the policeman who reports having lost his gun and are recorded as proof that the gun was reported missing or stolen to the SAPS and that the case is being investigated.

Metro police management uses the fact that the SAPS are probing the missing guns as a reason for avoiding holding their own disciplinary inquiry to find out how the guns went missing and if the policeman who lost them is culpable.
Trouble is, most of the listed SAPS case numbers are false.
In one case a Metro policeman has lost three guns and each of the SAPS case numbers next to these missing guns is fake.
Neither Sutcliffe nor the head of the Durban Metro Police, Eugene Nzama responded to queries as to whether this man was still in the Durban Metro Police. They also ignored questions on whether he has been issued another gun.
Neither did they respond to questions about Chatsworth SAPS case number 132/01/2005. In this case SAPS detectives recovered a Metro Police assault rifle from an armed robbery gang – while the Metro Police did not even know the gun was missing.
This case was not investigated by the Metro Police, despite the fact that the person caught with the rifle described and named the Metro Police officer who supplied him with the firearm.
When noseweek put all this to “Metro Mike” (as Sutcliffe is now known in Durban) the irate ANC big wig said that although “some” guns had gone missing, “all are now accounted for.”
Since he is known for his creative use of the English language, we challenged Sutcliffe to confirm exactly what he meant by “accounted for.”
It transpires that in Sutcliffe-ese it means that somewhere they are recorded on a scrap of paper as “missing” or “stolen”.
NOW READ HIS official statement on the subject again: “I have indicated that, in our own 2003 audit we ended up accounting for all the guns which should have been in our possession; this was confirmed by the 2005 SAPS audit and in my own audits now this has been confirmed. I am further investigating each aspect of these and what is being done about those guns which are accounted for but not any more under our control.”

Meanwhile, since being shot three years ago, policewoman Cox has endured nearly a dozen operations and is so badly scarred that she has been told no plastic surgeon in this country can help her. She’s also had her pay slashed – and been offered a pittance as a medical pension – an amount equal to less than one month of “Metro Mike” Sutcliffe’s salary.
Cox has also been told that her severe post traumatic stress is not, in the Metro Police’s view, due to her horrific injuries in the line of duty. So, she has had to pay for psychiatric medication out of her own pocket.
Metro Police have refused to pay for plastic surgery to repair the massive damage to her abdomen and her medical aid was exhausted long ago.
Metro Mike says he can’t comment on anything relating to Cox until he has finished his own investigation.
He ought, as the saying goes, to be shot.

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