"No person should have to deal with the horrors our police witness, yet they are not forced to get help."
|||“Nothing will bring my sister back, but I believe her death could have been prevented.”
Francois Schafer said this after Judge Esther Steyn handed down a 23-year sentence to Mountain Rise K9 police dog handler Morné Croeser for murdering his wife in a frenzied knife attack.
Erika was stabbed 14 times with a kitchen knife in the couple’s home in the Msinsi Game Reserve near Pietermaritzburg in 2010.
“We are happy with the sentencing because it sends a clear message, especially to law enforcement officers, that violence against women will not be tolerated, but all police members should be compelled to get trauma counselling for as long as they need it,” Schafer said.
“It was obvious to everyone that Morné had an anger problem and represented a danger to his family, but nothing was done to defuse the situation. Erika was afraid he would kill her, and he did.”
During the case it emerged that Erika had, on more than one occasion, begged a police officer to disarm her husband after he had made threats against her. He had also assaulted her, necessitating stitches to her face.
During cross-examination on the stand by state prosecutor Irene Neyt, Croeser denied that Erika’s family had begged him to get counselling, to which he had allegedly acceded at the time.
“I do not have an anger management problem,” he said.
Although Croeser appeared to be a loose cannon, he was allowed to continue carrying a firearm, said Schafer.
“They sent him to the border for a sort of ‘cooling down’ period, instead of making work of the problem,” he said. “The police failed in their duty to protect Erika.”
Shadow Minister of Police Dianne Kohler Barnard has been lobbying hard for mandatory counselling. “I have been pushing for this for five years, but I am always brushed aside with the comment: ‘They have the option.’
“It is a huge problem in our country and what underpins it is a macho culture that ‘only sissies or crazy people’ go for help.”
Kohler Barnard said she had approached the police minister to highlight the fact that there were insufficient psychologists to deal with the needs of the SAPS.
“No person should have to deal with the horrors our police witness, yet they are not forced to get help and they carry firearms. When a traumatised officer reaches the end note, all he can see is death and horror, and he takes out his family and himself.”
Police spokesman Lieutenant-Colonel Vincent Mdunge said psychological help was an integral part of support to members.
“A special team of counsellors and psychologists is employed with the objective of ensuring the interests of members,” he said.
“SAPS officers are regularly exposed to scenes that are hard for a lay person to imagine. In such cases they are required to undergo a trauma debriefing process, and thereafter an appointment is set for them to attend a counselling programme.
“The counsellors are highly skilled. There is a team based at provincial headquarters, and also offices in specific clusters around the province.”
Mdunge said the SAPS could not legally force members to undergo counselling.
“From a command point of view we do, however, insist that station commanders ensure that members undergo a compulsory debriefing process after traumatic events.”
Mdunge conceded that some members of the SAPS still believed that “cowboys don’t cry,” and were resistant to seeking help, fearing their colleagues might think them weak.
“It is vital to emphasise to our officers that they should not look down on those programmes. You might feel fine today and tomorrow, but the trauma will inevitably impact on you further down the line.
“We see crazy things in these cases, when men claim ‘I am strong enough to cope’ and then kill their wives, girlfriends and lovers, and often take their own lives.”
In the course of his career Mdunge has been exposed to horrific experiences which, he said, would have damaged him permanently had he not sought counselling.
“In 2006 we were alerted to an abandoned mortuary in Umlazi. The owner had been stockpiling bodies and pocketing the money he was paid to arrange burials, and then the electricity was cut off. We found more than 40 bodies in an advanced state of decomposition. I could not eat or sleep after that, so I went for extensive counselling.”
Two weeks ago Mdunge attended the tragic scene where two toddlers had burnt to death in a locked flat at Westpoint Lodge on Durban’s esplanade.
“Again, it was an experience that haunted me,” he told the Tribune. “The sight of those tiny children, with their fingers locked around the metal bars as they tried to escape…”
JUST some of the policemen who turned murderous over the last year:
2012:
January – Bhomubhomu Princess Ngcobo is gunned down by her policeman boyfriend outside Steers in Florida Road.
2011:
March – A Pretoria police reservist goes on a shooting rampage at a Pretoria police station, killing his girlfriend and wounding a pensioner before shooting himself.
April – A policeman shoots dead 45-year-old Jeanette Odendaal at Kempton Park Police Station after her car had accidentally bumped a police car.
June – A Pietermaritzburg policeman shoots and wounds his ex-girlfriend and another man and kills himself.
July – A Newlands policeman sets his home alight, killing his wife and three daughters.
July – A Cato Manor policeman shoots his wife, sister-in-law and mother-in-law.
August – A Rosebank police clerk kills a colleague, wounds his station commander and kills himself.
December – A Sannieshof, North-West, police officer shoots his wife in front of their eight-year-old daughter and commits suicide.
December – A woman is shot at a Port Shepstone shopping centre and her policeman husband kills himself.
2010:
February – A toddler witnesses his police VIP Protection Unit father, Zamumzi Nombewu, shoot and kill his mother, Nontsikelelo.
April – Constable Wayne Scheepers, of Paarl, shoots his wife, Antonet, and himself.
July – A Hazyview, Mpumalanga, cop kills himself in front of his children. - Sunday Tribune