The City of Cape Town has awarded a R30-million contract for three years to combat crime in ganglands.
Pulling the trigger might soon be riskier for criminals in Hanover Park and Manenberg on the Cape Flats, when a gunshot detection system makes a comeback in July.
“It has taken a long time but it is there now,” said JP Smith, the City of Cape Town’s mayoral committee member for safety and security.
Residents living in crime hotspots are held captive by constant gun shootings. The Cape Flats and surrounding areas are notorious for gang violence, extortion rackets, armed robberies and other criminal activities that often involve the use of firearms.
Between June 2019 and December 2021, the police recorded 442 mass shootings — when three or more people are shot — in the Western Cape. This number excludes individual shootings.
Smith welcomed the new tender awarded to ShotSpotter after a three-year absence, noting: “It is the best technology we can access.”
The gunshot detection system is set to be reintroduced on the Cape Flats as soon as next month and will assist law enforcers to respond to shootings more immediately and effectively.
Authorities are largely dependent on the public reporting gunfire. This delays the police’s response to shootings, a time gap that allows perpetrators to get away from the scene. The new technology sends an alert to law enforcers within seconds of a shooting, enabling them to react quickly and go to the correct area.
The detection system proved to be invaluable when it was first introduced to crime-riddled areas on the Cape Flats in July 2016.
It is estimated that it increased the firearm recovery rate by five times. From September 2016 to April 2019, 19 721 gunshots were detected and 68 firearms were recovered, Smith told the Mail & Guardian last year.
That same year, the city’s metro police department recommended that a new tender be initiated. But the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020 and the lockdowns made starting a new tender process financially and logistically impossible.
After a tender process this year, the City of Cape Town procured the gunshot detection system at a cost of R10-million annually, the equivalent of 20 officers and vehicles a year. The tender runs for three years.
The municipality had wanted to award the tender to a local company but the technology is not available, Smith said.
ShotSpotter is a passive system; it does not need an operator. When the system detects a gunshot, it picks up where the shooting has happened and sends out an alert within seconds. It is two to 10 metres accurate and is linked to CCTV cameras, which are pivoted to the direction of the shooting. This way, the shooters become audible and visible.
Smith said when the system was previously used, a change in shooting patterns was noticeable, with the number of shots per incident lessening because the shooters knew the response was quick and accurate.
To strengthen the prosecution of perpetrators, the detection system also records and stores audio files. In addition, it gives the city “a
very dense layer of information on which to draw and guide our deployments”, said Smith.
“We started identifying time slots when shooting was more prevalent and to identify the pattern of shootings — which actually moves every few days and migrates slightly — it allows us to focus on that spot and maintain a presence to intervene when it happens.”
The City of Cape Town does not have access to the South African Police Service crime statistics through the crime administrative system so the information provided by the gunshot detection system helps it determine where law enforcement must be deployed.
Smith said another valuable outcome is the trust relationship that is built between the city and residents. Because of a “consistent and reliable response” to gunshot incidents, the city to this day still receives more tip-offs from residents in areas where the detection system was previously used.
The City of Cape Town’s metro- and law enforcement officers and police officers do not need additional training to effectively use the detection system.
Gang-riddled Hanover Park and Manenberg will be the primary locations where the detection system will be active, but Smith said it might expand to Ottery and Elsies River.
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