A crime and policing expert says he’s not convinced that the recent deployment of policing resources to high-crime precincts, is having the desired effect.
Western Cape police commissioner Thembisile Patekile has revealed that 650 police officers have been moved from affluent police stations in Cape Town to those on the Cape Flats in 2022.
This was in response to pressure from several non-governmental organisations about the apparent lopsided deployment of police members in the province.
Patekile claims that the Top 30 most notorious stations are now 88%-90% staffed.
But Eldred de Klerk from the Africa Centre for Security and Intelligence says these stats can be misleading.
“We always tend to make it a numbers game, secondly there always seems to be a vale of secrecy as to the type of resources, the ranks, profession and competency of these officers and their particular role and designation within the South African Police Service”
De Klerk says the re-deployed officers don’t necessarily go out onto the streets to fight crime.
“We don’t see the people of the ranks of Captains, Colonels, often taking to the beat or responding to calls for service for example. If we have a missioned officer that’s part of the recruitment they’re unlikely to be serving the public directly”.
