More than 7000 law enforcement officers, including metro police and municipal traffic officers, have been deployed to put an end to the alarming rise of cash-in-transit heists in Gauteng.
These law enforcement agencies have already recovered more than R95million from the robberies since the spree began in August last year until now.
This was revealed by the Gauteng Police Commissioner Major-General Deliwe de Lange and the MEC for Community Safety, Sizakele Nkosi-Malobane, when they appeared before the standing committee on community safety in the Gauteng provincial legislature yesterday.
The pair were summoned by the committee to give details of their plans to deal with the heists.
Despite the alarming rise of these violent attacks in Gauteng, especially in the three metros, Nkosi-Malobane and De Lange claimed that the police were in control of the situation.
De Lange told the committee that she was unable to give details of their plans and strategies to avoid alerting the robbers but said the preliminary results were in their favour, especially with regard to the arrest of suspects and the recovery of sophisticated weapons used.
The committee heard that some of the weapons used were not available in the country.
“We have security plans in place to deal with cash-in-transit heists. Gauteng has experienced 74 such robberies since August last year. Thirty of these were attacks on cash vans in transit, while 44 were related violent attacks,” De Lange said.
She added that the police had nabbed 28 suspects in connection with 11 cases. De Lange, however, said more arrests were imminent as law enforcement officers had already profiled more than 126 suspects who could be positively linked to the crimes.
She said various automatic rifles were also recovered during the arrests, including during raids on hideouts of suspects, and said the use of non-South African guns was a worrying factor.
The committee also heard that mining explosives were used to blow up cash-in-transit vehicles.
“We have asked mining houses to conduct proper security measures on some of their materials used to extract minerals,” Nkosi-Malobane said.