Today’s CPF meeting was a big one. I regarded it as D-Day in deciding whether as community we can tolerate any further excuses from the station about its inability to reduce the rate of crime or stem the dramatic rise in certain categories.
The meeting was of the executive of the Pinetown CPF, known as the “Mother Body” to the 5 smaller sub-fora. It took 3 hours and was significant in that it dealt for the first time in great detail with exactly what the barriers are from the point of view of SAPF Pinetown and its station commander Brig. Zama.
While I am firmly of the opinion that Pinetown SAPF should be performing better with the resources it currently has, the following resource problems were highlighted:
1. Staff strength should be 406. Instead, 364 are allocated of which 37 have been seconded elsewhere and 42 are not available for service and listed under “casualties”. That leaves 285 people available or 70% of the desired strength.
1.1. In detectives, there should be 97 but there are only 63. Further, of the 63, 34 in the words of Brig. Zama are “recruits who cannot even express themselves, have never worked in the charge office and have never been trained as detectives”. You probably cannot quote that – in fact you probably shouldn’t in the interests of keeping the CPF relationship with SAPF intact – but you can most certainly ask him whether he believes his detectives are up to the task at hand. Head of detectives says they are handling caseloads of 150 cases each and yet the Brig. has no confidence in more than half of them!
2. Vehicles strength should be 95. Instead, 87 are allocated of which 9 are boarded, 10 are pending boarding (some pending boarding for 18 months without action from Province), 7 are allocated to Provincial Task Team, at least 12 Vispol vehicles are in the workshop (more vehicles from other departments are also in the workshops) leaving at most 49 vehicles available or 52% of the desired strength.
2.1. This mean that patrols are limited to 1 or 2 vehicles in each of the 3 sectors in the Pinetown Policing Area. Sectors 1 and 3 have huge areas to cover. S1 covers Kloof, Wyebank, Emolweni and New Germany. S3 covers, Westmead, Motala Farm, Marianhill, Asheley, Farningham Ridge, Moseley Park, Sarnia, Nazareth… (the list goes on).
3. Computers should be 126 but they have 72 with no indication given as to the functional status of those 72 computers. The station communications officer advised us during the meeting that he no longer has email access and that community members are to phone him instead. I reiterate, the communications officer of the station with the highest crime rate of the lot has no email access.
4. The moratorium on the recruitment of reservists remains in place despite a media statement by the Minister to the contrary. Reservists could greatly complement the staff numbers, assisting with the charge office and freeing up and contributing numbers to patrols and visible policing. See the two attached documents, one containing the parliamentary question which verifies the lifting of the moratorium and the text of the letter confirming the moratorium is still in place. (The original of the letter is attached in the other file)
5. Maintenance of the building is poor. Cleanliness and upkeep is poor. In response Brig. Zama contended he had petition DPW in 2007 for painting to which they responded there was no budget and there would be none until 2013/14 (and yet they can spend mega millions on hiring buildings at inflated prices and building new stations).
Having noted the above, I believe Pinetown SAPF should be doing better than they are. Members of the community must be encouraged to assist more actively, especially in the charge office, so more officers can engage in visible policing. The more visible policing we have, the greater our crime prevention, the less need we have for detectives, and thus the more visible policing we can have.
We need motorbikes and bicycles to get more and more ‘bobby’s on the beat’. The members of our community need to see the police patrolling their communities every single day – it should not be an event when they see it happen. Members of our community need to get to know their policemen and provide them with information and support.
I’m tired of seeing officers driving past people engaging in petty criminalism such as selling pirate DVDs and doing nothing about it, the criminals aware they will not be taken to task and going about their business as if there was no police van nearby. Spend some time in Hill St and you will see this happening. Criminals should know that the police will pounce on them if they engage in any criminalism whatsoever. Petty crime almost always graduates to more serious crime.
The lifting of the moratorium on reservists, to which the National Minister referred to in the wake of the ET murder as a measure being taken by the Police to curb rural crime needs to be expedited. It is nearly a year since he made the statement announcing the lifting of the moratorium.
Robberies have increased from low single digit figures in 2003-5 to 100-150 in 2009/10. Burglaries have increased steadily but surely. These are all crimes which can be combatted by visible policing and increased patrolling.
