Bid for team work to fight gangsterism
CIVIL society groups, trade unions and community leaders from Gauteng, the Western Cape, Eastern Cape and Free State came to Parliament’s portfolio committee on police to evaluate the anti-gang strategy.
Among the attendees were Cosatu, the Police and Prisons Civil Rights Union (Popcru), the United Public Safety Front (UPSF), community based organisations and community policing forums.
Popcru’s general secretary Nkosinathi Theledi, said the anti-gang strategy was based on human development, social partnership, spatial design and the criminal justice process to ensure that gangsterism savaging communities was not only a police issue, but one which involved all communities.
Theledi said the police needed to establish task teams dedicated to fighting gangsterism in all nine provinces.
“The task team should be made up of officers with specialised training, particularly in intelligence gathering,” Theledi said. “We call on SAPS to develop a new strategy.”
Theledi said they want to call on all community structures mandated to fight gangsterism to closely work and synergise their work with the police.
Cosatu deputy parliamentary coordinator Tony Ehrenreich said gangs were growing exponentially and were no longer limited to just drugs and violent crime in certain communities.
“They are rapidly growing into well-organised criminal syndicates, expanding into new economic sectors and taking over countless communities,” he said.
“It threatens the collapse of the government in many communities.
“If we want to make progress as a nation and to avoid following the route of some failed states, joint action between the government, community, business is urgently needed.”
UPSF founder John Cloete said there was a lack of leadership and commitment from station commanders to fight crime.
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