Two former Western Cape police officers found themselves on the wrong side of the law after they did not log seized items into evidence.
Wilfred Martin and Shaun Falmer, 56 and 43 years old, respectively were caught after a sting operation.
The pair were charged and convicted of fraud, defeating the ends of justice and contravention of Section 80(1)(a) of the Customs and Excise Act 91 of 1964.
They were police officers stationed in Paarl, and they were arrested after the Directorate for Priority Crime Investigation (DPCI) applied to the office of the Director of Public Prosecutions, to set up an entrapment as a member within the South African Police Service (SAPS) stationed in Paarl was implicated as being involved in corrupt activities that had unlawful benefits to members of SAPS and other members of the public.
At the time, the DPCI was tasked with investigating serious corruption within the province.
On 27 December 2011, a DPCI member, in an unmarked vehicle on Main Road, Paarl, pretended to be a foreign national whose vehicle broke down whilst transporting twelve boxes of illicit cigarettes.
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Three Paarl based police officers approached the vehicle and arrested the ‘foreign national' (DPCI members under cover) and seized the twelve boxes of illicit cigarettes on the scene. He was transported to the Paarl Community Centre, but only three boxes of cigarettes were booked in at the police station as seized goods.
The other eight boxes of cigarettes that were in the unmarked vehicle were not booked in at the charge office as per the norm but removed from the scene and stored at premises of a private individual. They were only discovered when the entrapment was exposed, and the accused were arrested.
The officers were released on bail and their trial started on 14 April 2014, when all the accused pleaded not guilty to all counts in the Paarl Regional Court.
The charge sheet was successfully amended to ensure that they were aware that they faced a minimum sentence of 15 years imprisonment since, as members of the SAPS, they involved themselves with fraud worth more than R10 000. They immediately challenged the constitutionality of the entrapment in dispute and a trial-within-a-trial had to follow. The evidence in this trial-within-a-trial carried on for more than five years.
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After Senior State advocate Tillette Berry’s extensive arguments, the court ruled on 30 October 2020, that the entrapment was not unconstitutional, and it did not create anything more than just an opportunity for the accused to commit the offences.
The State closed its case on 5 November 2021, and the defence closed its case on 30 May 2022.
Judgement was delivered on 2 August 2023, more than twelve years since the accused’s arrest.
Adv Berry submitted extensive heads of argument before sentence to ensure that the Court is alerted to the available case law on similar scenarios. She ensured the court was aware of the province’s statistics in respect of SAPS members who embarked on dishonest actions by presenting to the court statements from three different SAPS supervisors.
Martin and Falmer will hear their fate when they are sentenced this week.
