Dog cops 'shouldn't be jailed'

2001-11-23 17:12

Pretoria - A criminologist testifying in the trial of four North East Rand dog handlers on Friday conceded that the use of illegal immigrants as bait to train dogs would probably have continued, had it not been for video footage being shown on international television.

Irma Labuschagne said that three of the accused - Inspector Lodewyk Christiaan Koch, Sergeant Robert Benjamin Henzen, and Sergeant Eugene Werner Truter - were unlikely to have shown remorse or to have developed insight into how wrong their actions were, had not been for the video.

Koch, Henzen, Truter and Sergeant Jacobus Peter Smith on Monday pleaded guilty and were convicted on charges of assault with the intent to do grievous bodily harm.

Henzen and Truter were also convicted on a charge of attempting to defeat the ends of justice by making a false entry into the dog register in which they claimed the dogs were used on the illegal immigrants when they tried to flee.

Labuschagne testified that the three mentioned accused now realised that they had acted wrongfully and showed real remorse. Each of them had expressed the wish to ask their victims' forgiveness and make some financial contribution to them.

Practice already existed

She felt the three accused had inherited a sub-culture of violence within the police.

They had not instigated the training method of using illegal immigrants as bait, but as young policemen found that the practice was already in existence.

The three were not inherently evil as if society should be protected against them. They were basically good men who were now all gainfully employed and no positive purpose would be served by sending them to prison.

She recommended that the three should be sentenced to severe punishment "within the community" and that they should pay their victims some form of compensation.

Judge Willie van der Merwe on Friday remarked that evidence about the use of illegal immigrants as live targets for dog training as "a general practice" was "alarming".

"This means that while one cannot shoot a person, not even in his little toe, one could put one's dog on him," he said.

A social worker of the Department of Correctional Services, Ms Anna Stander, testified that Koch, Henzen and Truter should be given correctional supervision, which amounted to house arrest and practical community service.

The head of the dog training school at Roodeplaat, near Pretoria, Dr Johannes Slabbert, said he could not reconcile himself with what he saw on the video.

"A police patrol dog should be regarded as minimum violence, as a method to help an officer to arrest a suspect." >Dogs were not "racist", Slabbert said, and were trained to attack both white and black persons.

The trial will continue on Monday with further evidence in mitigation.

- SAPA