The Independent Police Investigative Directorate (Ipid) investigated 410 deaths as a result of police action in the financial year ending March 31.
This is up from the 353 cases in the previous year.
Ipid tabled its annual report for the financial year 2021/22 in parliament on Wednesday. It registered 5,295 new cases during the year under review, down from 6,122 in the 2020-21 financial year.
Ipid said the five case classifications that contribute 93% (4,908) of complaints were assault (3,407), discharge of the firearm (744), deaths as a result of police action (410), death in police custody (223) and other criminal matters and misconduct (124).
Ipid said the enforcement of Covid-19 restriction and the July unrest in Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal resulted in more cases of police misconduct — particularly assault — being reported to it.
Ipid said 4,015 cases were investigated and referred to the police and the National Prosecuting Authority for disciplinary sanctions and decision for prosecution respectively. The referrals to police involved 311 police officers.
The directorate said it secured 239 disciplinary convictions with 53 officers dismissed from service.
Regarding criminal convictions, Ipid said it secured 20 convictions with the highest sentence imposed being life imprisonment. The other sentences ranged between eight and 22 years for acts of crime.
To ensure it was easily accessible to the public, Ipid increased its footprint nationally despite its limited budget. Whereas it had four satellite offices in Pretoria, Witbank, George and Thohoyandou, in addition to the nine provincial offices in 2020-21, 11 new offices were established in the 2021-22 year in collaboration with the department of community safety. There are four new offices each in Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal and three new offices in the Northern Cape.
Ipid said it spent 98.34% (R347m) of its allocated budget of R353m and recorded a 94% achievement of its 2021/22 annual performance plan targets.
Ipid executive director Jennifer Ntlatseng said the under-expenditure was recorded under compensation of employees due to vacancies that were not filled.
“Our achievements included making headway as we made changes to the way we operated. We have managed to fill critical vacant positions, prioritised and converted some of the vacant positions into investigator positions which is our core mandate,” Ntlatseng said.
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