Cape Town - The City of Cape Town’s public emergency call centre (PECC) recorded 4 653 calls over the New Year weekend, which is a drop of about 700 calls compared with the same period last year when 5 393 calls were recorded.
The PECC operates as the centralised hub for emergency calls to City emergency services.
Call takers are able to reroute calls to external agencies like Metro Emergency Medical Services and the SAPS.
Safety and Security Mayco member JP Smith said: “The drop in calls to our public emergency communication centre is interesting, but it’s difficult to pinpoint the reasons.
“I think one can reasonably assume that while many people took full advantage of the curfew being lifted, others played it safe and continued with their low-key festive season celebrations.
“In spite of the lifting of the curfew, the New Year’s weekend was not overly busy, if the statistics are anything to go by. To be fair, a year ago we had a 9pm curfew, and public amenities were closed. So, it’s difficult to compare.”
Asked to compare how lifting the curfew affected festive season incidents, police spokesperson Andrè Traut said that due to a national moratorium, the SAPS cannot release comparative crime statistics for the time being, so they were unable to make comparisons.
“Our safer festive season operations were conducted throughout the holiday period, which saw large numbers of police deployments in the province to ensure the safety of the community and to maintain law and order, irrespective of the curfew.”
At the same time however, law enforcement, metro police and traffic services recorded 156 arrests in the past week, compared with only 75 last year.
Since the year began, the City’s metro police department had made 54 arrests and issued 1 837 fines for traffic and by-law transgressions.
Law enforcement recorded 70 arrests and the issuance of 2 938 fines, while their traffic counterparts made 32 arrests, impounded 15 vehicles, 43 cellphones and issued 39 272 fines.
One of the arrests involved a high-speed car chase from Sea Point to the corner of Jakes Gerwel and Voortrekker Road in Goodwood on
Monday morning. Staff from a security company spotted a silver Renault Megane that was used in a house robbery and alerted the City’s Cyclops centre, where CCTV operators located the vehicle in Sea Point and dispatched the metro police camera response unit and the SAPS.
Four suspects were arrested and two of them were found in possession of machetes.
The provincial Health Department said the Emergency Medical Services (EMS) also had a busy December and end-of-year weekend.
EMS spokesperson Byron la Hoe said that between December 1 and January 2, the EMS attended to 43 600 medical-related incidents, 11 453 trauma cases, 1 973 road traffic incidents, and 204 fires in the province.