Pretoria - Shoppers have a good reason to feel safe at malls throughout Gauteng during the festive season.
This is because well-trained students from the SAPS Academy, and thousands of metro police and SAPS officers will be stationed in shopping malls.
In addition, the Tshwane Metro Police Department said it had a strategy for road policing, crime prevention and by-law enforcement this holiday season.
The capital city, and its eastern suburbs in particular, boast the biggest formal retail space in the country. These naturally become a target for criminals during the festive season.
Gauteng police commissioner Lieutenant-General Deliwe de Lange said police were going full steam ahead to fight the higher levels of crime expected this festive season.
De Lange launched the province’s festive season operations at the Mall of Africa in Midrand on Wednesday.
One major part of the festive season plans would be visible policing, and De Lange revealed that about 2 000 well-trained students from the SAPS Academy would be stationed at all malls throughout the province.
More than 13 000 metro police and 32 000 SAPS members would be deployed for visible policing across the province over this period. “We will leave no stone unturned.”
De Lange said they had identified 17 malls across the province plagued by certain crimes, and would focus on them. The top cop did not divulge which malls these were.
De Lange said the theft of vehicles was one of the priority crimes they wanted to focus on.
The safer festive season campaign launched by acting national police commissioner Lieutenant-General Khomotso Phahlane two weeks ago would run until the end of January.
De Lange also advised people who were scared to stop when being flagged down by police to assess the situation and if possible find a safe place to stop.
Metro police spokesman Senior Superintendent Isaac Mahamba echoed her sentiments. “Robberies in malls are the biggest problem.”
Mahamba explained that a lot of people shopped at malls during the festive season and therefore became targets for thieves. Malls would be one of the city police’s focuses for crime prevention.
“It is with good reason as Pretoria malls have been targets for criminal activity in the past,” he said.
Just this month there was an armed robbery at The Grove Mall, while in July a man was shot during a robbery in Brooklyn Mall.
In September, a guard and a robber were killed in a cash-in-transit robbery at Soshanguve Crossing. A month before, Menlyn was the scene of a shooting as well.
Mahamba said metro police had a strategy for road policing, crime prevention and by-laws.
The road policing strategy, he said, would focus on both the driver and the vehicle.
“With the drivers we will look at their fitness to operate a motor vehicle; if they are drunk, zero tolerance! We will also check if they have the proper documentation.”
For public transport drivers, the police will be looking for a public driver’s permit, as well as a driving licence.
He said they would also check if the driver had a licence to drive the type of vehicle they are found to be driving. For a car, officers would be looking to see if the vehicle was roadworthy and without any defects, including checking the licence disc, tyres, mirrors, lights and windscreen.
“Our focus will be on speeding and overloading of vehicles because those things contribute to accidents on our roads.”
He warned that motorists found to be speeding and driving under the influence would be arrested.
The second phase of the policing - crime prevention - would focus on the malls as well as houses.
Mahamba said the third focus would be on by-laws, which included fire crackers synonymous with the “silly season”.
“People selling firecrackers need the proper licensing to store them because they are classified as explosives. Also, people are not allowed to sell firecrackers on the side of the road, so we will be looking out for them.”
He revealed that they would be patrolling the main roads in Pretoria such as the Moloto Road, N1, N4, R21 and the Mabopane Highway.
“We also have a unit focusing on drug hotspots 24/7 because we have hotspots in the city where drugs are sold and bought so we will be there in full force.”
Pretoria News