Pretoria - National police commissioner Riah Phiyega has approved an countrywide undercover operation aimed at breaking the back of crime syndicates targeting cigarette trucks, police said on Thursday.
Since the establishment of a task team in Gauteng, where robbers often targeted trucks transporting cigarettes while in transit and at depots, to deal with the syndicates, police discovered that the syndicates were moving their operations to other provinces.
“The problem was mainly in Gauteng so now its gone to other provinces and after discussion and review of the intelligence-driven operations, a decision was taken that a national team must be established,” said police spokesman Solomon Makgale.
Makgale said they also discovered links between the way the truck hijackings and depot robberies were carried out, and the spate of mall and cellphone shop robberies which have plagued the country.
“The modus operandi is the same and that is why we decided that we combine the team working on the cellphone and mall robberies with the team working on the cigarette truck hijacking, so now you’ve got a much bigger team which is a lot more focussed on looking at hijackings and armed robberies,” he said.
Since 2013, a total of 324 cases of cigarette truck hijackings and depot robberies were reported nationally, with 359 suspects arrested in connection with the crimes.
The majority of arrests were made in the Western Cape (154), followed by KwaZulu-Natal (64), Gauteng (59), Eastern Cape (43), and Limpopo (39).
The national task team will have short, medium and long term objectives, which include identifying threats at station level, dealing with repeat offenders and high-flyers, and cracking down on transnational organised crime syndicates.
ANA