NEWS
A female heroines 'reward',
Weekend Witness, 13 May 2006
“If they come now, after what’s been in the papers, then it means nothing. It means they are trying to lie to me that they care about me,” says Cox.
She did receive a phone call from the Metro Police store man asking her for details of the bulletproof vest she had been issued. Cox got the call on the eve of major surgery to have parts of her small intestine removed. She has already lost all of her large intestine.
And on Thursday evening she was told that she has a severe TB infection in her bowels.
In a cost-cutting measure the Durban Metro Police Service decided to not purchase any Small sized bullet proof vests, not any very large ones. The idea being that by buying moderate sized vests the same piece of body armour could be worn by several people.
Cox managed to have a company that makes body armour donate a vest to her. Sadly another Metro Policeman, former champion boxer, Cliffy Farrar, was not so lucky. After becoming involved in a gunfight with two armed hijackers Farrar was shot in the stomach – a wound that could have been prevented had he been wearing a properly fitting bullet proof vest.
Farrar wanted an XXXL size vest – the smaller vests the department bought ends well above his navel. Cox was also armed with a Tanfoglio TZ75 pistol, a vastly inferior copy of a Czech made handgun. She had sent the gun back for repairs dozens of times as it kept jamming.
When the Weekend Witness visited the heavily sedated Cox in ICU she commented on how lucky she was to get off 8 rounds from the gun before falling to a car hijackers bullets.
“It normally jams solid on the second round,” observed Cox, clearly in great pain. Her small body is covered in little scars. Cox big blue eyes light up with laughter when asked if she’s been in a bar fight.
But the answer leaves me holding back tears: “I’m like a pin cushion. But now the veins are collapsing. I just prey to God this is the last operation.”
The petite blonde policewoman has, over the nearly three years since she was shot, had 10 major operations to attempt to save her life. But the operating scars are now so bad that she had been told there are no surgeons in the country capable of successfully performing plastic surgery on her.
Cox is however immensely proud that she can walk. With irreparable nerve damage to her one leg Cox was told she would never be able to walk again – but she told the Weekend Witness that she was determined to run again one day – even though the damaged leg has now lost most of its muscle tone. Given a recommendation for bravery in the incident that almost snuffed out her life Cox has, according to her brother Shane, been: “deserted and hung out to dry,” by the department she almost gave her life for.
In August 2003 Cox and her partner from the Durban Metro Police Dog Unit were patrolling in the Southern Suburbs of Durban. A call came through that a hijacking was in progress nearby and they proceeded to the scene. Unable to initially find anything Cox and her partner were then told by a passing member of the public that men were in the process of hijacking a car around the corner.
As Cox and her partner turned the corner four armed men opened fire on them. She jumped out her car and began shooting back, but almost immediately a round hit her below the bullet proof vest she was wearing. She did not know it at the time but this round severed her femoral artery – giving her less than three minutes to live – and the gun that fired it was one allegedly sold by a crooked colleague of hers.
She fell to the ground and then her gun jammed as it normally did – this time not on the shooting range but while four armed men were trying to kill her, and while she was literally in the process of bleeding to death.
An ambulance was, fortunately, around the corner and arrived on the scene within seconds. But, after treating Cox, they then gave care to the injured car hijacker Cox had shot. Had a passing doctor not arrived at the scene and realized how seriously injured Cox was she would still have died. Cox drifted in and out of consciousness for weeks and months. But she remembers that her one and only visit from any Metro Police officer lasted only minutes – and so does her brother who sat by her side for most of that time.
While in hospital a senior detective informed her and her brother that Durban Metro Police service pistols had been used in the attack that almost killed her. The Serious and Violent Crimes Unit had obtained information that the firearms had in fact been sold by crooked Metro Policemen.
Cox went back to work – but from then until now has had her injuries wreck any hopes of a normal life or a career in the police she once loved. For six months she lived in her lounge, unable to walk due to massive open wounds in her stomach that could not be closed up as they kept becoming infected. A district nurse would visit her every night to clean the wounds and clean out her exposed internal organs.
Cherise declines to discuss her predicament in detail. But her brother, a former member of the elite Anti-Hijack Unit of the SAPS is more willing to talk. “You could see how upset she was the other night,” says Shane: “for the first time ever Mike Sutcliffe the Municipal Manager phoned. He wanted to see her and didn’t even know she’s in hospital again. He asked her not to speak to the press – and he knows my poor sister had done all she can to save the department’s name. Not once has she ever spoken to the media. She was asked to once by the Metro Police said she could only talk to the press if she agreed to lie about where the guns came from – and my sister is too honest for that.”
Months after almost being killed Cox had her salary slashed by half. Metro Police removed what they call her “Omnibus” allowance – a payment made to members of the service in lieu of overtime.
And, while Cox still has to pay her bond and her car installments, she now also has to pay most of her medical expenses. Her medical aid was exhausted long ago – and hospitals do not accept IOD payments. According to Metro Police her post-traumatic stress is not related to her employment and so she must also pay for her psychologist and physiotherapy out of her own pocket.
Said Shane: “After saying that she mustn’t talk to the press Sutcliffe then told her she must get better. I find that amazing. He earns as much in a single month as my sister does in a year and he still expects her to pay her own medical bills. How heartless, uncaring and cynical can the man possibly get? Life will never be the same for my sister again.”
But the appalling treatment of the young policewoman may well make the public safer. Since the exposure of her predicament in the Citizen and this newspaper last week, firearms controls have been tightened at the Durban Metro Police. An emergency audit of firearms was held this week – and Sutcliffe claims that he has ordered a top level investigation into how many guns are missing from the Metro Police armoury.
But Sutcliffe declined to discuss the way Cox has been treated. Instead all he would say is that the Metro Council would be investigating the treatment of Cox and that he had ordered a probe of how Metro Police guns have repeatedly found their way into the hands of armed violent criminals.
But this leaves Shane Cox cold. “He’s had three years to do something and he’s done nothing. Clearly the only reason he’s doing anything is because he now looks like a fool.” Metro Cops Thembinkosi Mthethwa and Sthembiso Zimu – the men who allegedly sold their guns to the murderous thugs who maimed Cox are still on duty and armed. They have not faced any form in departmental inquiry as to how they were allegedly robbed of their service pistols. An investigation by the Weekend Witness has shown that their version of how they came to lose their guns is at best highly suspect.
In fact the statements they gave Umbilo Police on 30 July 2003 after claiming they were robbed of their guns by three armed men have been described as “laughable” by detectives the Witness has shown them to. In the statements the pair claim they were on duty in full police uniform in a fully marked police vehicle when a white Golf indicated that they must pull over. The pair of policemen did so.
Mthethwa, in his statement to Umbilo Police, says: “The 3 black males suddenly jumped out the vehicle with firearms pointing at us…..” He then claims the three claimed to be policemen. He continues: “They came closer to us when they then said to us that we must give them our firearms. However they themselves disarmed us.” Mthethwa then goes on to say the men sped off in a white VW Golf with registration ND 527 890.
However he does not identify any of his robbers or even the clothes they were wearing, despite having been face to face with his robbers. The number plate he gave belongs to a Golf that was reported hijacked to the SAPS two weeks before the alleged robbery. Zimu makes a similar statement, but his is even more suspect. A senior former Murder and Robbery Unit policeman on being shown the statements asked why the pair did not follow the vehicle and report over the radio where the Golf was. Someone else thought of that too. Zimu’s statement has an addition, made in a different handwriting, that adds that the robbers also took the Metro Police van keys.
Zimu also did not sign his statement, making it completely worthless as evidence. He also does not describe his robbers, despite them being so close that the robbers allegedly searched him. And amazingly the pair also do not report being robbed of anything other than their guns – 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 – despite the fact that she herself was critically injured and armed with a gun that was not working.
Investigations by the SAPS Serious and Violent Crimes Unit led to several arrests for the shooting of Cherise Cox – and the recovery of the second Metro Police gun – the one allegedly stolen from Zimu.
One of the suspects arrested for this shooting told detectives that the criminal who shot Cox had told them he had in fact bought both firearms off Metro Policemen. He then described the two Metro Cops as being black males and on duty at the time the guns were bought.
Detective Inspector Bruce Mac Innes made a sworn statement to this effect and handed it to Cox to give to Metro Police management – so the police could take action. Inspector Dieter Meyer from the Metro Police was tasked with probing the claim –however Serious and Violent Crimes Unit detectives have never heard from Meyer – nor have the suspects in the shooting of Cox.
Sutcliffe explained that it was felt that it would “not be in the interests of justice” to question the awaiting trial suspects who made the claim. Former Durban City Councilor Lyn Ploos van Amstel, who was once a 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 they need to be cross-examined in great detail. If you are an on-duty policeman 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 them dead. That is common sense. A member of the public making a similar absurd claim would be charged with negligently losing their 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 circulated them as stolen on the SAPS computer system. The SAPS computer system allows the details of any stolen item to be circulated nationwide – providing it has a serial number. This also could have helped lead to the guns being recovered before Cox was shot.
Sutcliffe said that he would make the results of his probe into firearms control in the Metro Police known. However the public would probably be well advised not to hold their breath. In 2004 Councilor John Steenhuizen asked for the results of an audit into the Firearms controlled by Metro Police to be made available to council. In passing the motion he said that in the order of 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 about just how many lethal weapons crooked cops have put into the hands of armed gangs.
KICKED ONCE YOU'RE DOWN
Cox says his sister won’t be going back to work. When
her psychiatrist told her to take a holiday away from Durban she parked
her car at the ultra-high-security Metro Police base in South Durban, a
base that only members of the police can gain access to. She thought
that during her 3 weeks in Cape Town her car would be safest there.
She was wrong. While parked inside the Metro Polie compound someone
vandalized her car – scratching “DIE” on her doors. The Metro Police
have refused to consider paying for this damage, although the incident
is under investigation at the moment.. Elaine Harold, the head of
internal affairs is responsible for this case - and also probing the
negligent loss of firearms. However Harold, like the Chief Constable,
has no experience as a police officier. Instead she is a former Durban
City Health Department nurse.
.Said Cox: “And what makes things even worse is that the Chief Constable
has told her that her life is in danger if she goes back to work –
presumably from crooked colleagues.” Sutcliffe this week warned the
press that racism may fuel many whistleblowers. He said many policemen
were leaking damaging information to the press as they were opposed to
affirmative action.
AND COPS WONT PAY A CENT.
THIS week Dr Michael Sutcliffe did not respond to
questions over how the Metro Police could slash the pay of a maimed
police hero – and then leave her to pay her own medical bills. Chief
Constable Eugene Nzama - who was appointed despite having no experience
at all as a police official also ignored requests for comment. Sutcliffe
said that he could not comment on anything relating to Cherise Cox until
he had finished his own investigation into her shooting - an
investigation which was only launched after the appalling treatment of
Cox appeared in the media. However her brother, Shane Cox, appealed to
anyone who could help his sister with her medical bills to please
contact him.
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. H ospitals do not accept IOD payments as they take too long and so
Cherise is left trying to pay off her car, a bond and finance her
medical costs. The Metro Police have also refused to pay for trauma
conselling, claiming her Post Traumatic Stress and depression is not
related to being shot and almost killed in the line of duty.
Sutcliffe's take home package exceeds R1,2million per annum
Shane Cox can be contacted on 083 560 0489 or at shanec@telkomsa.net
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