Commissioner’s ‘quick-quick win’ plan for fighting crime

NEWLY-appointed police commissioner Khehla Sithole has unveiled his “quick-quick win” approach to crime fighting and it includes the relaunch of Operation Fiela, a controversial joint initiative of the SAPS and SANDF started after the outbreak of xenophobic attacks two years ago.

Briefing the police portfolio committee in Parliament yesterday, Sithole identified tackling criminal syndicates and gangs along with fixing the crime intelligence division as his priorities.

“I have decided on a ‘quickquick win’ approach where we want to make immediate impact. The situation in the country now requires us to fire from all cylinders and therefore all disciplines in Operation Fiela will be firing at crime and heavily so,” he said.

He added that crime hot spots needed to be normalised.

The appointment of a deputy commissioner for crime who would head up intelligence operations and detectives was imminent.

“Next week, we will be starting to work on a turnaround for crime inteligence,” he said.

Sithole acknowledged that the vetting section within crime intelligence needed to be beefed up.

“We have hundreds of thousands of employees who must be vetted but the capacity of the vetting section is not coming close to match the ratio. One of the priorities is to review that capacity.

“Measures were to be implemented to ensure nobody was hired without being vetted.”

In August it was reported that more than half the high- ranking police officers did not have security clearance. Sithole said it was critical that lifestyle audits be done on police officers.

KHEHLA SITHOLE