‘Nothing new’ about soaring hijack statistics for the cops

THIS week’s revelation that hijackings soared 55% over the past four years is “nothing new”, says the SAPS.

But that doesn’t mean it isn’t a concer n, says the SAPS. It insists it’s doing its utmost to curb hijackings through a series of operations.

On Thursday, the Institute of Security Studies (ISS) revealed the statistics on hijackings last year showed a spike of nearly 15% in reported cases.

Two-thirds of these incidents were in Gauteng.

While hijackings fell between 2012 and 2014, the number climbed from 12 773 in 2015 to 14 602 last year.

Gareth Newham, head of the ISS gover nance, crime and justice division, said the spike was part of a general rise in violent crime, including murder.

He blamed the inter nal strife and incompetence within the SAPS’s crime intelligence units over the suspension of crime intelligence Richard Mduli, who still wielded an influence on the operations of the unit.

Newham claimed Mduli was still involved in intelligence operations.

Hijackings, he said, were dealt with successfully before and could be again.

“Between 2009 and 2011 the trio task team tackled hijacking, house robberies and business robberies. When they arrested people, they conducted full intelligence profiles on them,” he explained.

These profiles included taking cellphone data and using specialised analyst data to link suspects with other criminals within their network.

This task team included 460 members, comprising detectives and intelligence of ficers. “In two years, house robberies were reduced 20%, business robberies 19% and hijackings 32%.”

But, according to police spokesperson MajorGeneral Sally de Beer, the SAPS were well aware. and concer ned, about the spike in hijackings.

However, as the statistics became known to police management, the trio task team units received extra funding for further operations, she said.

The task teams, she said, were looking at 20 hotspot clusters, where specific teams are conducting operations around these crimes.

In March, then acting police commissioner Khomotso Phahlane announced these as part of the national trio crimes action plan.

“We have had numerous successes countrywide, but we understand these crimes are a concer n,” she told the Saturday Star.

Earlier this week, a video of a motorist being hijacked at a filling station in Honeydew on Wednesday went viral.

The CCTV footage showed the crime took less than a minute, with two ar med robbers approaching the man in his MercedesBenz and quickly ordering him out of the vehicle.

As the man saw the assailants get into his vehicle, he seemed to resign himself to the hijacking, putting his hands in his pockets and walking of fcamera.

Honeydew police cluster spokesperson Captain Balan Muthan said, while no arrests had been made, the car was recovered in Kagiso the same night.