Xolani Koyana
PROVINCIAL police commissioner Arno Lamoer has been summoned to Parliament to answer for glaring staff shortages at the Nyanga Police Station, where 56 detectives are overburdened with 9 000 cases among them, with one alone loaded with 600 dockets.
The average caseload for detectives was close to 200 cases at any time, Parliament’s portfolio committee on police heard during an oversight visit to the Nyanga Police Station yesterday.
Nyanga has a reputation as the country’s “murder capital”, with 262 killings reported in 2012/2013, yet it has emerged that it is not only short-staffed, but does not have any crime intelligence officers.
The committee expressed concern that staff shortages meant there was poor police visibility and a failure to reduce the crime level.
The station’s acting commander, Mzukisi Gunya, told MPs officers were overworked because of staff shortages.
According to the police’s resource allocation guide, the station should have a complement of 292 officers, but had been given 285.
Thirty officers were being discharged from the service or had resigned, while 19 members of the visible policing unit were stationed elsewhere – yet continued to be reflected in SAPS provincial head office records as being in Nyanga.
Gunya said there were too few patrol vehicles for the precinct’s six sectors, so police visibility was being severely affected.
Each sector had one vehicle.
The precinct had a satellite police station in Samora Machel, and this was also under-resourced, Gunya said.
Of the 63 detectives allocated to the station, seven had been assigned to specialised provincial units not connected
with the station, he said.
The acting head of detectives’ services, Lana Poolman, told the committee that the remaining 56 detectives were investigating 9 000 dockets. The unit needed at least 71 detectives.
Poolman said the detective with the most dockets was investigating 600 cases and the officer with the fewest, assigned to a specialised gang project, 45.
She said many of the cases in Nyanga involved violent crimes and it took time to solve them. In the financial year to March 31, 10 643 cases had been reported, but no progress had been made in 4 396 of these.
In 66 percent of rape cases in the same year, the suspected culprits had been traced, but in murder cases, just under 11 percent. Of the rape cases that made it to court in the same period, close to 56 percent ended in convictions, while 56.87 percent of the murder cases resulted in convictions.
The number of rapes and murders reported to the station will not be made public until the SAPS releases its annual report later this year.
Committee chairman Francois Beukman said it was “worrying that 56 detectives were faced with resolving 9 000 dockets”. The problem needed urgent attention.
When he appeared before the committee on September 10, Lamoer would have to say what steps would be taken to deal with it, Beukman said.
In the light of Nyanga’s not having any intelligence officers, Lamoer would also be expected to explain the role of intelligence in crime fighting.
“It is important that these outstanding issues be dealt with at portfolio committee level,” Beukman said.
The committee also spoke to residents, and some of the MPs expressed concern about complaints that phone calls to the police station went unanswered, while police vans called out to urgent complaints took up to two hours to arrive.
The committee commended officers for the work done in spite of the lack of resources.
Martin Makhasi, secretary of the Nyanga Community Policing Forum, said the growing use of tik among the youth, the mushrooming of illegal shebeens, and youth gangs were contributing to the murder rate. The forum was soon to launch a project targeting drug dens, while police were cracking down on shebeens.