Thanks for tip-off about sale of police firearms

IT IS with great concern that I learnt that a Gauteng police officer has been arrested and implicated in the illegal sale of firearms to gangsters in the Western Cape.

For months, communities have told me, the police and anyone that will listen that gangsters are using police firearms, and I have escalated these reports to the highest police offices in the country in terms of my oversight role over the SAPS in the Western Cape.

This week’s news confirms that our communities know what is going on around them, and the police should place more value on the information they provide. I thank those who have come forward with this information and encourage anyone with similar information to report it.

A report in one of your sister publications this week has claimed that Western Cape detectives found “that some of the weapons they confiscated from gangsters had had their serial numbers erased – but ballistic tests revealed the weapons had actually been in the Gauteng Firearms and Liquor Control Unit”. The report revealed that a “nationwide investigation into firearm links between the police and gangsters then followed”.

I welcome the comments by national police spokesman Lieutenant-General Solomon Makgale that “It will go a long way into resolving many gang violence-related cases in the Western Cape as well as theft of firearms and ammunition from SAPS depots”. I trust that more such incidents will now be identified and immediately stopped.

It has also been revealed that fraudulent firearm licences have been issued to gang leaders in the Western Cape. These licences must immediately be cancelled and the holders arrested.

Any police officer found breaking the law will be arrested, and I trust that the Western Cape police commissioner, Lieutenant General Arno Lamoer, will continue his policy of zero tolerance with regard to police corruption and criminality.

This news marks a huge blow against the gangster killers destroying our communities.

DAN PLATO Western Cape Minister of Community Safety