Paul Kirk
Police are withholding information from citizens that may well prevent them becoming victims of crime.
An official document compiled by the police Crime Information Analysis Centre (CIAC) and leaked to the Mail & Guardian shows that police have compiled a database which shows where crimes are most likely to be committed and at what times.
The publication of this information and its dissemination to the public would allow citizens to decide which areas to avoid and at what times.
An examination of the “Area Crime Pattern Analysis” compiled for Durban in the CIAC’s monthly report shows that police have identified the top five areas (block numbers) for all serious crimes, recorded the number of cases a block, identified the day of the week the crimes are likely to be committed as well as the time of day.
An analysis of the rape “Area Crime Pattern Analysis” shows that KwaMashu block number 331575 is the top rape spot of the area and that rapes occur in that area on Fridays and Saturdays between 10pm and 1am.
These block numbers do not occur on normal street maps, only on special police issue maps.
National commissioner of police representative Sally de Beer said these statistics had been proven inaccurate by the police during “Operation Crackdown.” She said the release of these figures would “almost certainly not help anyone”.
Said De Beer: “During the early days of Operation Crackdown we identified the worst crime areas off these reports and launched operations in those areas. However, very soon we found that the statistics were not helping us at all. In one instance we found that clerks had been using the wrong codes to record the crime of rape. Instead of rapes they were recording robberies. In another instance we found clerks had recorded pick-pocketing committed on buses as ‘cash in transit heists’.”
De Beer said the national commissioner would be reviewing the moratorium on crime statistics “sometime in June”. She said publishing inaccurate police crime statistics not only served no purpose but may alarm the public.
Antoinette Louw of the Institute of Security Studies (ISS) said while crime statistics at local level are often not accurate, national crime statistics generally are. She also said that, in her opinion, “all crime statistics should be public”.
Said Louw: “With national crime figures the numbers are in the millions. These sorts of figures can stand a large amount of inaccurate reporting and still be valid.”
Louw said a recent ISS study had found crime to be on the increase by about 22% more than the figures the M&G has obtained suggest.