“We are dealing with a person who is not supposed to be walking the streets,” said minister of Police, Bheki Cele, about the suspect who was arrested for the killing of two police officers in Kimberley on Tuesday, 22 August.
At a press briefing in Kimberley on Wednesday, Cele informed the media that the 38-year-old suspect had previously been arrested with numerous criminal cases against him – amongst other for fraud and drug-dealing – and which was either withdrawn, or in which he mostly received suspended sentences.
Cele said suspects like these must not be given another opportunity to commit crime.
“The police are under siege,” Cele continued, referring to the latest crime statistics which indicated that 31 police officers were killed while on duty in the period April to June.
Although there are bad police officers, there are thousands and thousands good police men and women, he commented.
In answering a question from the media whether the police are sometimes dissatisfied with court rulings, he answered that the police many times find the justice system to be more kind to perpetrators than to victims.
On Wednesday late morning Cele, accompanied by amongst other national police commissioner Gen. Fannie Masemola; provincial commissioner Lt. Gen. Koliswa Otola; and other dignitaries of the South African Police Service, visited the families of the 45-year-old Sgt Kedimetse Masilo and 35-year-old Const. Okaetse Mandindi who were both attached to the Kimberley Flying Squad.
Cele said when these officers left their respective homes on Tuesday morning, their family members expected to see them after work.
The youngest of Mandindi’s children “is still on the lap of the mother”, Cele said, and now this five-year-old child, with his 10- and 15-year-old siblings, must grow up without a father.
Also, Masilo’s two children, aged 21 and 25 years, have to grow up without a mother.
“These children have lost a parent,” he said, emphasing the traumatic influence of these losses to the families, and ways they might suffer to survive without a breadwinner. In the meantime, perpetrators can study while doing their sentence, and get three meals a day.
Cele said both families have agreed on official funerals for their loved ones.
