Gallant effort by metro police on gun warfare
ShotSpotter can’t stop gangsterism, but it’s achieving success
IN THE opinion piece “Gunfire in Cape ganglands goes on despite hi-tech interventions” penned by Lester September (Cape Argus, January 9, 2018), the author claims to be chairperson of the steering committee of the Forum of Cape Flats Civics. There are many such civic bodies with undisclosed memberships or mandates.
The article extensively quotes Roegshanda Pascoe of the Manenberg Safety Forum, another body of unclear constitution and mandate.
Mr Pascoe’s views are often the subject of opinion pieces penned by a variety of authors who call into question the City’s combating of gangsterism and our decisions around investments in innovations around policing, notwithstanding that the City has a very modest policing role in comparison with that of the SAPS, with only 3% of their resources and very limited policing powers compared to the SAPS, who are controlled by the national government.
In an effort to boost our crime-fighting capability, we have deployed an assistive technology called ShotSpotter. The ShotSpotter technology is a gunshot detection system – it is the audio version of a CCTV camera, which listens to crime instead of looking at it.
The technology pinpoints precise locations where shots are fired within 30 seconds, allowing for a rapid response. Previously, police wasted valuable time and resources driving block by block looking for evidence as criminals escaped the scene.
ShotSpotter has allowed the metro police and SAPS to respond to every single gunshot, as opposed to one in about eight as was previously the case. The system generates data that informs operational plans and helps target the right locations and times when incidents are most likely to happen.
As a result, witnesses are able to give evidence and descriptions of shooters, which has led to the City increasing its recovery of illegal firearms by a factor of five. In the 18 months up to and including the end of September 2017, the metro police recovered 72 firearms, much of it through the aid of ShotSpotter. The SAPS, incidentally, which is 33 times larger, recovered only 50 firearms in that period.
The system also allows for the forensic evidence gathered through the sound recordings to be used as evidence. This evidence is now being used for the first time in a criminal case in Cape Town.
Both Johannesburg and Port Elizabeth have recently trialled ShotSpotter, with very positive early results, and it has received nothing but positive feedback from the SAPS and the respective metro police services.
Despite these evident successes, the City has never suggested that ShotSpotter is the answer to gangsterism and gun violence in the Cape Flats. Gang violence is an extremely complex social and economic issue, and no one technology or intervention can solve the problem.
Any debate around the effectiveness of the ShotSpotter programme needs to be understood in the context of where security resources are concentrated within South Africa.
Mr September cites a confused selection of statistics regarding deployment of City personnel, going back as far as 2002, in order to support his claim that municipal police are required to be “the main support to SAPS”, and questions at length the allocation of metro police officers in the Cape ganglands. For the record, SAPS has 22 000 staff in the city; the metro police 550.
The primary responsibility to fight serious violent crime lies with the SAPS – not because they are the ablest but because this is where the constitutional and legal powers vest, as well as the staff resources.
The metro police also have fewer powers than the SAPS and have no investigative powers (according to law), which means the metro police can therefore never be expected to take over the role the SAPS is meant to perform.
Mr September’s skills in analysis and critique would be far better served if directed towards the SAPS rather than endlessly throwing stones at the metro police’s efforts – which in my opinion are nothing short of gallant, given the size of the gang problem in the Cape and the pitiful resources and scope they are afforded.
To find a workable strategy to combat prolific gangsterism is no easy fix. Worldwide, it is a challenge that has required the best minds within a wide variety of fields to devise a way forward. The City is exploring every available option to improve safety, from the deployment of the Gang and Drug Task Team, neighbourhood watches, the stabilisation unit, paying informants for information to recover illegal drugs and firearms, to the culmination of these in the Neighbourhood Safety Team initiative in Delft, with 120 extra police and numerous social development programmes. ShotSpotter likewise has a key role to play in supporting our crime-fighting effort.
In stumbling around enthusiastically in his attempt to school us on all we are doing wrong, Mr September does stumble upon one truth: that gangsterism is a problem which needs to be attacked from all fronts – from the domains of policing to education to health to social development.
That said, statistics presented by the SAPS to the provincial government at the end of last year showed that the number of gang shootings had dropped by nearly half.
The various interventions we are driving is helping to achieve that outcome. There is much left to be achieved.
What is needed is for cohesive and unified action from everybody involved and not the poorly informed, divisive criticism offered by Mr September.