Police team redeployment to townships could meet resistance, after objections

POLICE Minister Fikile Mbalula’s decision to redeploy members of the Tactical Response Team (TRT) in the townships could meet resistance after some in the ranks of the police objected to the move.

The South African Police Union has come out against the idea, saying the unit was not needed to deal with domestic violence.

Mbalula said in Parliament recently the unit needed to be redeployed in the townships.

The Police and Prisons Civil Rights Union (Popcru) said it fully backed the minister to send the unit back into the townships, but warned against any form of brutality if it was sent back.

Sapu general secretary Oscar Skommere said yesterday that the TRT was not the right unit to deal with the wave of violent crime against women and children.

“The bringing in of the TRT will be a reactive type of (deployment), instead of research. Crime intelligence must be on the ground to feed information to the police. We know the TRT are skop en donner – what are you going to do when a person is already dead?” he said.

Skommere said communities should assist the police: “Without them the police cannot win the war against crime.”

Popcru said it was fully behind Mbalula’s decision to send the TRT back into the townships. Spokesman Richard Mamabolo said the unit was misplaced at the moment and should be deployed to deal with kidnappings, cash-in-transit robberies and illegal firearms.

But Institute for Security Studies senior researcher Johan Burger said it was wrong for Mbalula to send the unit back into the townships. He said crimes against women and children happened behind closed doors and the TRT would not be able to deal with them.

The unit was created to deal with serious violent crimes involving criminal gangs with heavy weapons.