Johannesburg - A crack police detective team who bust a gang of mall robbers have now been roped in to nail cop-killers, following a spate of murders of police officers in recent weeks.
The police top brass also revealed in Parliament on Tuesday that they had nabbed some of the important leaders of the Rolex gang in Gauteng at the weekend and seized 58 Rolex watches worth hundreds of thousands of rands.
Head of intelligence collection at crime intelligence Major-General Josh Lekalaka told MPs that the crack detective team was formed in July last year to bring the mall robbers to book.
Lekalaka and other senior police officers were briefing the portfolio committee on police on their work.
He said the co-ordination of their work had led to the smashing of the gang, resulting in the arrest of 27 alleged members of the syndicate.
Malls were under siege in the past few months, with a spate of robberies.
Lekalaka said the arrest of the gang members had led to a sharp decline in mall robberies countrywide.
“You will see more of these operations,” he added.
“We don’t have the luxury of medium to long-term solutions to these robberies.”
The time for action was now, he told MPs.
Lekalaka said most of the cellphones stolen in the mall robberies lately had been smuggled to Nigeria.
This was confirmed by the service providers, who said their phones had been activated in that country.
He added that they had made a significant breakthrough by arresting some of the people behind the Rolex gang.
The gang has been targeting houses in Sandton and upmarket suburbs in Joburg.
During the team’s operation on Sunday, they arrested two people linked to the main member of the Rolex gang in Soweto and Alexandra, Lekalaka said.
In the first operation, they nabbed the girlfriend of the main member at a house in Soweto and found 11 firearms which have been linked to several house robberies in Sandton, Florida, Brackendowns and Delmas.
During the swoop, they confiscated 58 Rolex watches and other accessories.
This arrest led to the second one in Alexandra, where three firearms were recovered.
The suspect arrested in Alexandra is linked to the main suspect, who is still on the run.
Lekalaka said they had extended their operation to investigating the murder of police officers.
The decision to extend the crack team’s mandate was taken after a number of the officers had been gunned down.
In less than two weeks, seven officers were killed across the country. Lekalaka said the police would continue with these operations until they had achieved their goals.
The Star