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Article: Power to the ones who need it most.(Life)
- Article from:
- Cape Argus (South Africa)
- Article date:
- October 28, 2009
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Killings by police are at a 10-year high. According to the Independent Complaints Directorate, 556 people, including 32 bystanders, were shot dead by police in the year to April 2009.
Worrying as these numbers are, what about the police killed in the line of duty over the past year? And what of those men and women who have buckled under the strains of the job, taking their own lives or that of their nearest and dearest?
Last week, former Claremont policeman Marius van der Westhuizen was sentenced to 24 years in prison for murdering his three children in a 2006 shooting in which he also tried to kill himself.
In his defence, Van der Westhuizen ...