More police assigned to combat gang-related crime
WITH the gradual increase in violent crimes, particularly crimes related to gang violence on the Cape Flats, the National Crime Combating Forum through the crime register has deployed 200 police officers to help curb the scourge.
The multidisciplinary group of officers, welcomed by Police Minister Bheki Cele and the provincial police management at a police camp in Belhar yesterday, are to augment the force carring out Operation Lockdown in the province.
According to Cele, the officers had been deployed since March in the Khayelitsha, Delft, Kraaifontein, Nyanga, Harare and Philippi East policing precincts.
Cele said crime in the Western Cape remained difficult to reduce in several categories. He said out of the 30 police stations countrywide dealing with the highest levels of crime, 10 were in the Western Cape, and most of those were in the city.
“This is the city that develops different roots of crime, for whatever reason … most of the drugs that are produced in the country, are found to be destined for this city; hence in Worcester, we will have a roadblock and (seize) about R15 million worth (of drugs) coming from other provinces, especially Gauteng, to here,” he said.
Community Policing Forum provincial chairperson Fransina Lukas said the deployment was good news, because they had been complaining to police management about a lack resources to deal with violent crime and gangsterism on the Cape Flats.
Lukas said she was hoping the additional resources would make a meaningful difference in the fight against crime and stop killings in communities.
Whistle-blower and community activist Colin Arendse said the deployment was an indictment on the Western Cape government, “who has consistently failed to deliver in terms of its own anti-gang strategy talk shop that was adopted by the provincial legislature in 2008”.
He said fighting gangsterism and the social ills associated with it was not only the responsibility of the police.
“Those responsible for the lack of service delivery in the city and province, that provides a breeding ground for young gangsters to flourish should also be held to account,” said Arendse.
The chairperson of Parliament’s portfolio committee on police, Tina Joemat-Pettersson, said the battle against gangsterism in the Western Cape was very serious and needed a lot of attention.
Chairperson of the community safety standing committee in the Western Cape legislature, Reagan Allen, said he had asked the provincial department of community safety about their role regarding the police, and for a full disclosure of operations and objectives, and about the cost of the deployment and its duration.
“While additional support from the police was important, this temporary deployment of officers is only a Band Aid on a festering wound,” said Allen.
He said their concerns remained the same. “We need a permanent increase in the quantity and value of police resources. This has to be done by the lead policing agent in the country, and that is a decision which only the national government can take,” he said.