KZN can handle protests, say police

Dianne Kohler Barnard Photo: David Ritchie

Dianne Kohler Barnard Photo: David Ritchie

Published Sep 22, 2014

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Durban - The SAPS was ill-prepared to deal with public violence, especially resulting from service protests, the DA said on Sunday.

The annual crime statistics released on Friday showed there were 15 102 reported cases of public violence in the province during 2013/14, down slightly from 15 797 in 2012/13.

“Public violence linked to service delivery protests is very frightening because innocent people get caught in the crossfire. The state has insufficient members in the public order unit, and this makes it difficult to contain protesting crowds, said the DA’s spokeswoman on policing matters, MP Dianne Kohler Barnard.

“There is also lack of intelligence to inform police in time when there are protests.”

She added: “Today there are 4 721 members in the public order unit, stretched throughout the nine provinces, and this is not enough to deal with violent situations.”

Nationally, there was a total of 2 172 876 crimes of all sorts, up by 5 559 from the previous year’s statistics.

Kohler Barnard said there was also a need to increase the number of police officers from the current 157 000 to 250 000, and for them to be much better trained.

KwaZulu-Natal has seen numerous violent protests this year, some of which resulted in cars being damaged and main roads closed to traffic.

In KwaDukuza, residents were complaining about water supply and Mooi Mpofana residents wanted the mayor and councillors ousted because of poor service provision.

Provincial police spokesman Colonel Jay Naicker said as far as they were concerned they had sufficient members in the public order unit in KZN.

“Our members are capable of dealing with violent situations and we work together with the metro police. However, we are looking at increasing the capacity in that unit,” he said.

Dr Joel Bregman, of the Social Justice Coalition, said crime statistics could not be relied on as a sole measure to judge police performance.

In a statement released yesterday, Bregman said: “This is because all crimes are lumped together, whereas in practice some crimes are far easier to police than others. For example, it is accepted that contact crimes such as murder are very difficult to police because they usually occur between people who know one another.”

To see whether the police were doing a good job required an inspection of a number of other indicators, he said.

“Currently crime statistics are released in September for the previous financial year, ending in March. This means that by the time crime statistics are released to the public, they contain data that is between six and 18 months out of date.”

Daily News

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