The letter “A silent government” (June 5) refers:
Crime prevention is a SAPS competency. The City of Cape Town's role is to act in support of the SAPS where resources allow. To contextualise the situation, the City has 530 metro police officers compared with the 22 000 SAPS officers. We can support SAPS and communities, but we cannot replace the job SAPS is meant to do.
That notwithstanding, the City's Metro Police Gang and Drug Task Team, K9 and Equestrian Units, Tactical Response Unit, and Stabilisation Unit are deployed on extended shifts in gang hotspots like Hanover Park, Elsies River and Lavender Hill, in addition to our school resource officers.
We've rolled out the ShotSpotter gunshot detection system in Hanover Park and Manenberg, started managing informants, and increasingly focused on more crime intelligence-driven policing operations.
In the first three months of this year, the City's metro police made 1 133 arrests for drug possession, drunk driving and other crimes including murder, assault, robbery, domestic violence, and possession of illegal firearms and ammunition etc. They also confiscated nearly 5 000 units of drugs, nine firearms, and 284 rounds of ammunition.
This is over and above the "petty rubbish" the writer claims they fill their days with. The South African constitution compels local government to do traffic and by-law enforcement – it is our core constitutional competency.
The City runs a number of social crime prevention projects including after-school and holiday programmes to divert children from the streets.
The metro police department hosts regular camps for youth at risk, resulting in the formation of the youth cadet programme, which has seen remarkable results. The City's women in rental stock programme is making progress in addressing crime and anti-social issues emanating from the City's rental stock, as is the Law Enforcement Social Housing Unit.
We might not be able to do everything that is needed to turn around the crime situation with our limited resources, but to suggest that the City is doing absolutely nothing is quite simply untrue. Gang murders have steadily reduced over the last three years.
There is no doubt that we have been a big contributor to these outcomes and have done much more than any local authority before, or elsewhere in South Africa to combat gangsterism and serious violent crime.
To this end, we have diligently pursued a partnership with the SAPS and the co-operation has steadily improved over the last couple of years.