Crime strategy comes under review

THE NATIONAL Assembly’s portfolio committee on police has called the station commanders of the top five stations in South Africa with the highest incidents of violent crime to Parliament today.

Committee chairperson Francois Beukman said it was critical that violent crime be addressed as the police’s number one priority.

The committee decided that the station commanders of Hillbrow, Johannesburg Central, Kagiso, Mitchells Plain and Nyanga should appear before it so that the SAPS strategy on combating contact crime could be evaluated.

“Murder, attempted murder, robbery and rape are the crimes that affect the safety of communities and the necessary strategic and operational measures should be taken to intervene in the top five crime stations,” Beukman said.

The committee had always emphasised that SAPS needed to act pro-actively to ensure that the stations had the necessary resources to deal with the crime profile in the five stations’ areas.

The Civilian Secretariat for Police has also been invited to brief the committee on the root causes contributing to the high crime rate in the affected areas.

Some of the contributing factors for contact crime such as a lack of social cohesion, poor environmental design of neighbourhoods, illegal liquor outlets, poor street lights, availability of illegal guns and the prevalence of gangs will also be under the spotlight.

“Dealing effectively with the root causes of contact crime is not only a police matter, but involves other spheres of the government and civil society,” Beukman said.

“The role of Community Police Forums is vital to foster community participation in the fight against crime and the CPF chairs have also been invited to the meeting on Tuesday.” MALATSWA MOLEPO

Parliamentary Communication Services