By Lavern de Vries
Police have assured Cape Town residents they have gang-related violence under control.
This comes after recent flare-ups, such as those in Bishop Lavis, where 13 people had been murdered.
The violent incidents in the Cape Flats suburb did not constitute the onset of a full-scale gang war, they said.
Speaking at the weekly police briefing in Bishop Lavis on Thursday, Senior Superintendent Denise Brand, the station commissioner at Bishop Lavis police station, assured the public that despite the surge in gang-related murders in the area, the police had a good strategy in place.
This included each police station identifying and targeting so-called high-flyers.
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Criminals who operated from beyond the boundaries of police stations were monitored on a provincial level with the help of the province's War Room.
They had also identified four areas - Bishop Lavis, Atlantis, Delft and Mfuleni - which had the most gang-related activities over the past three months.
Station commanders at various stations added they had made several arrests in terms of the murders and shooting incidents.
Brand said police would also intensify efforts to curb housebreaking and shoplifting, which she labelled as "feeding sources for drugs".
Asked where they expected the violence to spread to, Director Hendrick Burger, cluster commander for the Bishop Lavis area, said it was "hard to tell, but we have to have a simultaneous policing approach".
Irvin Kinnes from the University of Cape Town's criminology department said there had definitely been a lull in gang violence over the past two years.
He attributed this to truces and trading in demarcated areas between certain gangs, and the partnership between communities and the police.
Kinnes said he could not explain the cause for the flare-ups, but said the release of prisoners could have an impact.
"When people are released into society, they often commit crimes that the number gangs have instructed them to do this causes conflict on the streets and could be a possible reason."
Bishop Lavis Community Police Forum spokesperson Lennie Mart said he thought the violence stemmed from socio-economic circumstances.
"The high unemployment rates and school holidays, which sees the youth not being kept busy, provide cannon fodder for the gangs and make it easy for them to recruit people."
Senior Superintendent Basil Vellai also warned that, with the festive season looming, there might be an increase in house robberies and robberies as people who received bonuses were easy targets.
- This article was originally published on page 14 of Cape Argus on December 05, 2008
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