Counterfeit, illicit goods on police’s radar

Law agencies mobilise

Illicit and counterfeit goods have become the focus for the police in Gauteng who are now using coordinated systems to improve their detection.

Yesterday, the portfolio committee on community safety in the provincial legislature received a report from the Gauteng Law Enforcement Agency Forum (Gleaf).

The structure was established to enable municipal police, SAPS and other law enforcement agencies to work together on joint operations.

Presenting the report to the committee, Brigadier Mark Joseph, provincial head of visible policing, said it was the duty of the station commanders to deal with second-hand goods shops operating in their jurisdiction.

After granting the permit to run the second-hand goods business, the commander is expected to make visits to the shop every month to make sure that the second-hand retailer complies with the conditions of their permit.

Joseph said police also rely on community members to give them information on second-hand goods retailers which cannot easily be spotted by authorities.

He said every station should have the capacity to deal with second-hand goods retailers.

The other issue police are facing in Gauteng is counterfeit and illicit cigarettes.

“It is an organised crime. There are loads of trucks coming into the country from different places. There are people investigating this from the Hawks and organised crime unit,” Josep h said.

“We normally have operations with brand owners who go with us to identify these products. But this is not the impact that we want.

“In Gauteng, the biggest bust that we had within the City of Johannesburg was counterfeit goods to the value of R60m. But with the cigarettes we don’t seem to find that.

“We are not hitting that warehouse where we find R50m worth of counterfeit cigarettes. That is what we are working on, to increase those networks of intelligence and deal with that stuff. Cigarettes are not the only problem now, we’ve got counterfeit liquor. We have a team that deals with illicit liquor and counterfeit liquor.”

Joseph said Gleaf was making progress in certain aspects of fighting drug abuse. “Yes, we can deal with the supply of drugs, we can increase these arrests as high as we can.

“But nowhere there are we talking about demand. Demand [for drugs] is a problem. Within Gleaf, we do not have capacity to consolidate the demand stage. This needs another level [of intervention].”

Cigarettes are not the only problem, we’ve got counterfeit liquor now