In Becker, Police lose an ace sleuth

THE Namibian Police are about to lose one of their very top detectives.

Chief Inspector Nelius Becker, an ace detective and virtual one-man fear factor among Namibia’s more risk-conscious criminals, will be handing in his Police badge and service weapon at the end of this month. After 21 years as a Policeman, Becker is walking away from a job that he says he enjoyed.But it is now time for something new, so from next week onwards, he will no longer be tracking down some of Namibia’s most dangerous and most wanted – a task in which he had excelled during his Police career.”I’ve done my bit,” he says.”Twenty years is long enough.”He takes with him not only years of experience, but also a fearsome reputation among Namibia’s more hardened criminally-inclined.For years the warning “Neels Becker is on your case” was enough to send on-the-run offenders fleeing to the furthest corners of Namibia in an effort to avoid arrest.Fleeing did not help, because usually Becker eventually got his man – and in a couple of notable cases women, too.But all that will end when October comes to a close on Sunday.POLYGRAPH MAN From then on, Becker will be the man from “Namibian Polygraph Services”, no longer working to get criminals off the street and into courts and prison, but rather available for anyone needing his help in establishing the truth – or lies – of whatever is happening in that client’s business or personal relationships.As a trained polygraph examiner – these devices are not just “lie detectors” but also “truth detectors”, he says – he will be working for any company or individual needing dishonesty or potential dishonesty in a business or personal relationship investigated.Banks, security services companies, companies needing pre-employment checks to make sure that potential employees do not have hidden histories of dishonesty or clashes with the law, will be some of his clients, he explained yesterday.He will, however, miss his Police work, he readily acknowledges.It is the type of work that never leaves one’s blood, he adds, but he feels he has reached a ceiling in the Police, so it is time to go.STRING OF SUCCESSES Becker, now 38, was not even old enough to get a driver’s licence when he joined the then South West African Police in 1983.He has been a detective since 1988, and has been the commanding officer of the Serious Crime Unit – one of the few sections of the Police with a general reputation for success – since 1995.”I was just lucky, in some way,” he says when asked about his record of cracking strings of Namibia’s most serious and most high-profile crimes over the past decade.Some that stand out in his memory include the Florin murder at Swakopmund, where a German resident at the town was convicted of murdering his wife and then dismembering and cooking her remains in a failed effort to hide the crime.Becker signed the arrest warrant that landed Thomas Florin – at that stage about to board a plane for a flight to Germany with his and his missing wife’s two children – in custody in early June 1998, while the Police were still trying to investigate Monika Florin’s reported disappearance.They soon discovered her remains hidden in the ceiling of the couple’s house at Swakopmund.That case stands out because it was one of the most interesting he has worked on, having also entailed a substantial degree of forensic investigations with which he had to piece together what happened in that murder, Becker recalls.Another case which stands out for him was the Mia von Solms murder case, where Okahandja resident Von Solms eventually admitted that she had given orders for a female friend to be murdered because she had felt that the friend had interfered with her own friendship with another woman.That case had twists and turns like a story book, with the eventual culprit having initially not been a suspect at all.Small, tentative leads had to be followed up to get to the bottom of the truth, Becker says.He can also list a string of other murders – bloody farm killings, crimes of passion, cold-blooded, robbery-motivated murders, killings followed by the dismemberment of bodies, the brutal murder of a dirt-poor tramp in Klein Windhoek in the early 1990s, where it turned out that the two men who had strangled and stabbed him to death did it merely so that they could steal his shoes – and also record-size cash heist cases where he played a key investigation role, each time with success.’JUST LUCK?’ What makes a good detective, in his opinion, are experience and dedication to the job.He adds that in his own case it is probably just luck, the fact that he does not let go of something once he is on a trail, “like a bulldog”, and that he has a strong point in being able to interrogate a suspect and get him or her to talk – “and that does not mean beating up” the person, he says.With interrogation, one has to first sum up a person’s personality, and adjust your approach accordingly, he believes.Then you should not criticise or judge the person, and it helps to leave a back door open by giving the impression that you understand the position the person finds him- or herself in.The result, more often than not, has been that people would open up and start talking about what they had done and were suspected of.With the Serious Crime Unit, he would also stress that team work was a crucial part of its recipe for success.If he had ever reached a point where he could be said to be in danger of burn-out – a phenomenon often encountered in high-stress jobs like that of a detective – it is about now, he says.One learns to cope with the job, but it still does not become easier to cope with its demands, he explains.One could always say things do not affect you, but he believes they do, in one’s subconscious.Even today, after 21 years, he is still shocked by what he finds at some crime scenes, he admits, citing as an example a recent quadruple family killing and suicide in Windhoek.In fact, if the sight of something like that does not bother you, you have to be worried, because that would mean there is something wrong, he adds.Becker was interviewed on Wednesday, just after he had testified in another of many armed robbery cases that he had seen come past him in his years.Part of his testimony included a telling remark, heavy with irony, when he confessed:”I’m well-known by criminals in Windhoek.”After 21 years as a Policeman, Becker is walking away from a job that he says he enjoyed.But it is now time for something new, so from next week onwards, he will no longer be tracking down some of Namibia’s most dangerous and most wanted – a task in which he had excelled during his Police career.”I’ve done my bit,” he says.”Twenty years is long enough.”He takes with him not only years of experience, but also a fearsome reputation among Namibia’s more hardened criminally-inclined.For years the warning “Neels Becker is on your case” was enough to send on-the-run offenders fleeing to the furthest corners of Namibia in an effort to avoid arrest.Fleeing did not help, because usually Becker eventually got his man – and in a couple of notable cases women, too.But all that will end when October comes to a close on Sunday.POLYGRAPH MAN From then on, Becker will be the man from “Namibian Polygraph Services”, no longer working to get criminals off the street and into courts and prison, but rather available for anyone needing his help in establishing the truth – or lies – of whatever is happening in that client’s business or personal relationships.As a trained polygraph examiner – these devices are not just “lie detectors” but also “truth detectors”, he says – he will be working for any company or individual needing dishonesty or potential dishonesty in a business or personal relationship investigated.Banks, security services companies, companies needing pre-employment checks to make sure that potential employees do not have hidden histories of dishonesty or clashes with the law, will be some of his clients, he explained yesterday.He will, however, miss his Police work, he readily acknowledges.It is the type of work that never leaves one’s blood, he adds, but he feels he has reached a ceiling in the Police, so it is time to go.STRING OF SUCCESSES Becker, now 38, was not even old enough to get a driver’s licence when he joined the then South West African Police in 1983.He has been a detective since 1988, and has been the commanding officer of the Serious Crime Unit – one of the few sections of the Police with a general reputation for success – since 1995.”I was just lucky, in some way,” he says when asked about his record of cracking strings of Namibia’s most serious and most high-profile crimes over the past decade.Some that stand out in his memory include the Florin murder at Swakopmund, where a German resident at the town was convicted of murdering his wife and then dismembering and cooking her remains in a failed effort to hide the crime.Becker signed the arrest warrant that landed Thomas Florin – at that stage about to board a plane for a flight to Germany with his and his missing wife’s two children – in custody in early June 1998, while the Police were still trying to investigate Monika Florin’s reported disappearance.They soon discovered her remains hidden in the ceiling of the couple’s house at Swakopmund.That case stands out because it was one of the most interesting he has worked on, having also entailed a substantial degree of forensic investigations with which he had to piece together what happened in that murder, Becker recalls.Another case which stands out for him was the Mia von Solms murder case, where Okahandja resident Von Solms eventually admitted that she had given orders for a female friend to be murdered because she had felt that the friend had interfered with her own friendship with another woman.That case had twists and turns like a story book, with the eventual culprit having initially not been a suspect at all.Small, tentative leads had to be followed up to get to the bottom of the truth, Becker says.He can also list a string of other murders – bloody farm killings, crimes of passion, cold-blooded, robbery-motivated murders, killings followed by the dismemberment of bodies, the brutal murder of a dirt-poor tramp in Klein Windhoek in the early 1990s, where it turned out that the two men who had strangled and stabbed him to death did it merely so that they could steal his shoes – and also record-size cash heist cases where he played a key investigation role, each time with success.’JUST LUCK?’ What makes a good detective, in his opinion, are experience and dedication to the job.He adds that in his own case it is probably just luck, the fact that he does not let go of something once he is on a trail, “like a bulldog”, and that he has a strong point in being able to interrogate a suspect and get him or her to talk – “and that does not mean beating up” the person, he says.With interrogation, one has to first sum up a person’s personality, and adjust your approach accordingly, he believes.Then you should not criticise or judge the person, and it helps to leave a back door open by giving the impression that you understand the position the person finds him- or herself in.The result, more often than not, has been that people would open up and start talking about what they had done and were suspected of.With the Serious Crime Unit, he would also stress that team work was a crucial part of its recipe for success.If he had ever reached a point where he could be said to be in danger of burn-out – a phenomenon often encountered in high-stress jobs like that of a detective – it is about now, he says.One learns to cope with the job, but it still does not become easier to cope with its demands, he explains.One could always say things do not affect you, but he believes they do, in one’s subconscious.Even today, after 21 years, he is still shocked by what he finds at some crime scenes, he admits, citing as an example a recent quadruple family killing and suicide in Windhoek.In fact, if the sight of something like that does not bother you, you have to be worried, because that would mean there is something wrong, he adds.Becker was interviewed on Wednesday, just after he had testified in another of many armed robbery cases that he had seen come past him in his years.Part of his testimony included a telling remark, heavy with irony, when he confessed:”I’m well-known by criminals in Windhoek.”