Way to improve safety is one bite at a time

‘WHEN eating an elephant, take one bite at a time,” wrote the American soldier Creighton Abrams half a century ago.

Closer to home, a smart woman we all know has three secrets of success. First: “Get up early.” The second and third are: “Make lists. Then stick to them.”

But the real work is putting these ideas into practice. Routinely, diligently, every day. Until they become habit.

Or, even better, until they become systems. Systems which will stand independently, robustly, sustainably. Not sabotaged by “tomorrow’s new idea”.

So what “systems” are most important to us? Well, most of our number one priority is our safety.

Now we all have multiple safety partners – our families, neighbours, schools, traffic police, ambulance crews. The list is endless. But our primary partners will always be our police, the South African Police Service.

And what “systems” do they use, in their relationship with us? The answer is to be found in “National Instruction 3 of 2013: Sector Policing”.

Essentially: like the elephant, a police station’s area is too big to tackle whole, so they are divided up into sectors. Each sector has its own sector commander, with dedicated accountability.

A sector forum is established to draw communities into the prevention of crime.

A sector profile is developed – a planning tool to identify the demographic and geographic information, and the needs, concerns, perceptions and abilities of a community.

Police resources are then deployed to address these plans, in line with crimepattern and threat analysis, in partnership with the community in the sector.

Some police experts consider sector policing the Holy Grail of their trade. By breaking up police station areas into manageable sectors, the objectives are identifying hotspots and vulnerable communities, improved response times, improved investigations, better informer networks, bringing the police closer to the community, improving partnerships with the community, enabling the police to understand local problems by identifying and addressing he underlying causes and activating community-oriented problem-solving.

Ultimately, rendering a quality service with the support of the community, and improving trust and confidence in the police.

Crucially, sector boundaries ought to be aligned closely with municipal ward boundaries so that the police, municipalities and communities can sing from the same hymn sheet.

So how can communities improve their safety? In bite-sized chunks, one bite at a time. Using systems we support. With our partners in blue, sector by sector. Uniformed and civilian partners, united in common purpose.