Durban - Community Policing Forums (CPFs) around Durban are brainstorming new crime-prevention strategies to avoid the crime spike felt in Westville this month.
The CPF in nearby Kloof plans to improve camera surveillance, eManzimtoti is to meet soon to cement plans, and Greenwood Park is doing its best to maintain the high level of community participation it revived three months ago.
The Westville CPF welcomed a beefed-up metro police presence after a meeting this week with Deputy Mayor Fazwia Peer, where emotions ran high.
“It will take a while for the guys on the ground to gather intelligence. It’s not something that can be fixed overnight,” said Westville CPF spokesperson Caz Weeks.
“We hope the word gets through to the syndicates that they are going up against something if they try their luck.”
However, he believes the root of the Westville crime problem lies in the local police station being under-resourced and, for repeated periods, without a full-time station commander.
Weeks said the position was a slot for a colonel, and people in that position had moved elsewhere when they were promoted to the rank of brigadier.
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“The CPF would like to see Westville SAPS upgraded to a brigadier police station,” he said. “We believe it should be, given the amount of policing in this area of 13 000-odd homes, two major shopping malls and a shopping centre, businesses, a university, a prison and a hospital.
“That requires resources and senior management.”
He said the Westville police station needed to get its numbers bolstered and get the backing it needs.
In Kloof, CPF chairperson Corné Broodryk said the crime wave in Westville had not yet hit, “but we do believe it’s coming”. He spoke of plans to install cameras at entrances and exits to Kloof, including licence-recognition devices.
Broodryk put the problem down to unemployment, saying that the 20 gate batteries stolen last month were probably sold for R50 each.
“Someone who sells five can probably live off that for a week. People are desperate,” he said, adding that the metro police and SAPS were unable to deal with the crime.
In eManzimtoti, a spokesperson for the local CPF, who did not want to be identified, said new strategies and ideas would be presented at a meeting in 10 days’ time, but would not elaborate.
She said that while eManzimtoti’s Galleria Centre had been hit by jewellery robbers late last year, and a spate of further such incidents had happened elsewhere, including in Musgrave and at the Hilton Hotel, most crime in the southern town had been opportunistic.