Police officers whose lives are endangered have the right to respond appropriately to protect themselves. But this does not justify the random killing of civilians who may or may not have been correctly identified as criminal suspects by one or other police officer.

The sharp rise over the past two years in the number of "criminal suspects" shot and killed by the police in KwaZulu-Natal should raise serious concerns among law-abiding citizens about the seemingly trigger-happy approach to policing adopted by the SA Police Service in KZN.

Last week, KwaZulu-Natal Provincial Police Commissioner Lieutenant-General Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi confirmed that KZN police had shot and killed at least 40 alleged criminal suspects in shootouts since the beginning of April 2024 alone.

Instead of being concerned about these numbers, a sizeable portion of the public appears to support (and even cheer on) what they interpret as the adoption of a shoot-to-kill policy by the police.

Many supporters of the shoot-to-kill approach strangely assume, first, that all the victims killed by the police were indeed dangerous criminals, as alleged by the police, and, second, that they therefore deserved to be killed, even without having been convicted and sentenced after receiving a fair trial.

Large sections of the public also seem to accept at face value claims made by the police after each new incident that those "suspects" killed had first opened fire on the police and that officers had therefore acted in self-defence, or at least had...