Cape Town – The Manenberg Community Policing Forum (CPF) has expressed disappointment over the City of Cape Town's ceasing of the Shotspotter initiative, aimed to determine where shots are fired from.
The City launched the project five years ago to much song and dance, but the Good Party's general secretary Brett Herron said the R32 million project has been “quietly abandoned”.
The technology, which picked up the audio frequency of gunshots and was supposed to send alerts of where shots were being fired with the use of sensors, was piloted in Hanover Park and Manenberg in 2016.
Manenberg CPF chairperson Vernon Visagie said the forum was disappointed Shotspotter had come to an end.
“It made a difference because it made it easier to tell where and when crime was being committed.
“We are struggling to find culprits and there is currently a spike in gang violence and shootings.”
Herron said the “vigorously marketed game-changer in reducing crimes” was stopped in 2019.
“In his written response, finally tabled this week, (Minister of Local Government, Environmental Affairs and Development Planning Anton) Bredell was at pains to defend the project's value for money.
“He offered no reasons for its abandonment when the City's contract with the US owners of the technology expired in 2019,” Herron said.
“When safety and security Mayco member JP Smith was “caught up in the hype”, he announced the technology had increased the recovery of firearms fivefold, Herron added.
“The mayor and his councillors must stop bamboozling ratepayers ... The R32m might have funded community-based organisations doing real work.”
Smith said access to the gunfire detection system came to an end in July 2019 and metro police recommended the City initiate a new tender as the initial funding for the system was limited grant funding.
“The Shotspotter gunfire detection system added huge value, hence the starting of the process to reinstate it. Shotspotter, the brand name of the system used during the first tender, allowed police to respond to every single gunshot incident, as opposed to one out of eight or one out of 13 as had previously been the case due to low levels of gunshot reporting and the difficulty in identifying an accurate location in operational environments.
“When we assessed its value to determine whether it should be reinstated after the initial pilot programme, it was estimated the system increased our firearm recovery rate five times over.
“From 2016 until April 2019, 19 721 gunshots were detected through Shotspotter. Sixty-eight firearms were recovered during this period.”
Cape Times