The number of police officers has been allowed to drop and it is no surprise that at the same time crimes the police themselves define as ”more policeable crimes” have soared, Democratic Alliance (DA) Chief Whip Douglas Gibson said on Thursday.
Between April 1998 and March 2001, 18 193 officers left the SA Police Service, Gibson said in a statement.
”At the same time, crime statistics provided by the SAPS [South African Police Service] to the Democratic Alliance show that there have been marked increases in at least three important categories of crime: robbery with aggravating circumstances, housebreaking at residential premises and other robbery.”
These were the categories of crime that could be prevented by an increase in conventional policing, he said.
National Commissioner Jackie Selebi, in referring to more policeable crimes, had written, ”The monitoring of the decreases and increases of these crimes will, consequently, serve as a fair indication of the success achieved by conventional policing on its own”.
”What is the commissioner’s record of success?” Gibson asked.
From 1998 to 2001 the annual recorded number of aggravated robberies had increased from 88 319 to 119 446, housebreakings from 266 817 to 303 235, other robbery from 62 111 to 89 486, and thefts from motor vehicles from 188 438 to 202 308.
”Crime has been contained in some areas and the effort and hard work of all police must be appreciated, but without a serious commitment to reinforcing the SAPS with highly trained, highly skilled, highly visible police officers, South Africa faces an uphill battle,” he said.
”What we see from these figures is that the men and women of the SAPS need urgent back up.”
They not only needed to be in force in greater numbers, but also be in visible patrols in the streets where people lived.
”We know that there is a desperate shortage of police officers and, to that end, the DA is campaigning to put 150,000 properly trained and appropriately deployed cops on the streets,” Gibson said. – Sapa