OH WATCH

The Community Police Forum (CPF) has the mandate of overseeing the partnership between SAPS and the Community. For neighbourhood watches, this Forum is critical as it ensures effective service delivery from SAPS and good communication with the community. The newly elected Chair of the CPF is Henry Giddy of Tamboerskloof Neighbourhood Watch and the Vice Chair is Brandon Golding of Gardens Neighbourhood Watch. OH Watch has two representatives, Jonny Levin and Francis Richter and they are to be thanked for their dedication to the cause of keeping us all safe.

OH Watch also thanks the outgoing Chair, Mo Hendricks, the Security Manager of the Central CID, who put a lot of effort into getting the neighbourhood watches in the City Bowl off the ground. The CPF Chair, should in my opinion, be an independent person, rather than from an organisation that has to work with SAPS on a daily basis. The Chair will sometimes have to take a hard line with SAPS, in oder to get things done, and it doesn’t help if you are reliant on them to do your own job, as Mo is - kind of referee and player in the same game. So OH Watch is expecting great things from the new CPF leadership this year. No pressure!

Last week all the neighbourhood watches in the City Bowl had a meeting/Bambabani with the top brass of SAPS in the City and were addressed by Major General Roberts. The continued building of a positive relationship with SAPS is essential, and it is this partnership which will result in the effective realisation of our efforts in decreasing crime in our City. It is with this in mind that we collectively highlighted key issues for discussion, the resolution of which will go a long way towards achieving our shared goals. We also identified Successes which are indicative that the Sector Policing Model does work. These are the issues that we identified:

Critical Issues: These issues are defined critical in so far as their deficiencies are resulting in the failure of sector policing.

• Vehicles:
(a) Lack of Vehicles: regularly less than two vehicles per Sector (the minimum stipulated). Not enough vehicles for all Sectors (maintenance issues).

(b) Vehicle Deployment: vehicles held over with complaints or in the cells with arrests or sterilised due to court duties

• Manpower:
Regularly a problem with insufficient manpower – hence often only one officer per vehicle instead of two

• Equipment:
(a) Morpho Touch / Rapid ID: extremely useful and effective tools in identifying wanted suspects. However generally there is only one such machine at SAPS Central and when it is unavailable suspects must be taken to Sea Point for morpho touching. This takes the vehicle out of the area for a length of time. More positive arrests of Wanted and repeat offenders would be possible if each Sector had a morpho touch or Rapid ID machine. SAPS officers would require training on these as it is understood many are not authorised to utilise these as they are not trained and certified to do so.

(b) Computers for officers & detectives: There is a dire need for computers for both Sector Commanders / Managers and Detectives. This would allow more efficient case flow management and communication.

• Sector Managers and rank competency:
Sector Commanders / Managers without sufficient rank find it difficult to command action at the Station. Sector Commanders / Managers should therefore have the rank of a Commissioned Officer in order to be able to implement Sector Policing Strategies effectively.

Important Issues:

• Sector Policing:
(a) Demarcation of Sectors : some Sectors in the City are not geographically suitable for timeous response and / or contain dissimilar urban entities with very different policing needs (eg CBD and residential fringe in the case of Gardens Sector 1; traffic congestion in Buitengraght means a vehicle in De Waterkant cannot respond timeously to an incident at the top of Tamboerskloof in Sector 3)
(b) Retention of Sector Personnel within the Sector: It is preferable to have officers who know the area and the communities within it. Therefore it is important to retain key personnel within the Sector – if not knowledge and skills are lost from the Sector.

• Detectives: to be included and accountable within the Sector Policing Model and should be available at CPF meetings

• Reservists: need to action the uptake of willing citizens into the SAPS Reservist programme as a number of applicants from the City Bowl have registered with SAPS but with no progress

• Shift change: this is better than previously but still have a problem with no SAPS coverage during shift change. When suspects are sighted / apprehended during this time it is often not possible to effect a positive arrest.

• Crime Intelligence: need for decent & regular feedback to NW’s on Wanted’s, Crime Alerts, Crime Trends, latest modus operandi etc

• Incident Management: suspect processing in the cells should not hinder continuation of policing within the Sector – this is generally the case now with a vehicle taken out of service for a number of hours

• SAPS officers morale: Whilst we often see excellent examples of proficiency and passion in the field, many officers find the station environment problematic with little support from Management

Successes:

• Sector Sweeps & co-ordinated SAPS/Community operations

• Active SAPS patrolling - stop & searches etc

• Use of the morpho touch machine when available / working

• Some passionate & proactive SAPS officers

As you can see quite a number of issues that need to be worked through so that SAPS and consequently neighbourhood watches can be more effective. OH Watch looks forward to lending our support.