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Police in uniform at a crime scene.
The KwaZulu-Natal violence monitor, Mary de Haas, has attributed ongoing criminal impersonations of police officers to poor management in the South African Police Services.
Authorities in the province have raised serious concerns over the issue.
This also follows an increase in illegal activities, including robberies at homes, particularly in KwaMashu.
In a statement issued earlier during the week, police said suspects usually wear different pieces of police uniform such as a bulletproof vest, a police cap, mask or raincoat.
Once they are inside a home, they will point firearms at occupants while others ransack the house before they flee.
In a recent case, men posing as police officers robbed a 36-year-old woman of cellphones and cash in her home in J-Section.
De Haas says it’s imperative for police to improve their management to deal with such issues.
“There’s also been abuse of blue lights over the years, people who shouldn’t have them, people wearing police uniforms that we don’t know where they came from. And this just means you’ve got to control things much better at the police management level. You’ve got to kind of keep an inventory of who gets uniforms and whether they are counted for, if police resign for example.”
VIDEO | KwaZulu Natal Premier Thami Ntuli last month was alarmed by escalating levels of violent crime in the province, in particular murder, rape, armed robbery and car hijackings:
