Superintendent Joe Odendaal’s old-fashioned courtesy and gentle air belie his track record as a tough cop who gets things done. He shrugs off the accolade offered by a weekend newspaper, which named the Sandringham precinct as one of Joburg’s safest suburbs.
“What does safe mean? One incident is one too many,” he retorts dismissively. “We are not interested in sitting around patting ourselves on the back. Our goal is to achieve a crime-free area, and we need to improve continuously to get there.”
This all sounds a bit pie in the sky given the reality of life in Jo’burg, but Odendaal will not entertain any “mean world” defeatism. He makes it clear that while he expects his officers to do their jobs efficiently and professionally, he also expects residents to take responsibility for their own security.
His suggestions for crime fighting range from simple precautions, such as locking doors (I’m stunned to hear that a fair number of robberies happen when people fall asleep watching TV with their doors open), to acting as the eyes and ears of the police and feeding them intelligence for crime-busting operations. Input from the community policing forum helps the police to analyse trends and identify hotspots, so they can increase patrols in that area and set up roadblocks and observation posts to ensure that criminal outfits don’t gain a toehold there.
Police failures are often blamed on a lack of resources. Odendaal will have no truck with this: “It’s not about how many resources you have, it’s how you manage those resources for optimal results.”
Perhaps our diet of American cop shows has created the idea that serious policing has to be all helicopters and SWAT teams, but in Sandringham the opposite is true. The strength of the precinct comes from the everyday slog and mundane activities of a network of volunteers, reservists and ordinary citizens. VigiÂlant grannies swiftly report broken street lamps to the council and school principals work with the station on everything from drugs to truancy. In Sandringham the fight against crime is held together by the collective will of this community, which is large and diverse. It encompasses the affluent and traditionally Greek or Jewish suburbs, such as Fairmount and Glenhazel, and River Park, which was built on the outskirts of Alexandra to house those displaced from the township.
And crime is not over once the sirens have subsided and the glass has been swept up. In fact, its impact is often only really felt in the ensuing weeks and months. The station has set up an impressive victim empowerment programme to assist victims of contact crimes, in the short and long term.
Victim empowerment volunteer Ann Ross was a police reservist until she “got too old to jump over six-foot walls”. She explains that the crisis intervention group consists of trained volunteers who are on standby 24/7 to attend crime scenes and assist victims with immediate practical support, such as contacting banks to cancel stolen credit cards or calling a glazier to replace broken windows. They also offer tips on how victims can improve their personal security. “There is so much one can do to avoid becoming a victim,” says Ross.
The victim liaison group spends the days following the crime phoning the victims and informing them of their case number and the name of their investigating officer, giving them a progress report and offering trauma debriefing. The trauma counsellors are volunteers with suitable qualifications — social workers or psychologists — who are also given additional training. Some of the station’s police reservists are also lawyers, so they offer legal support to victims and advise them of their rights or about legal processes.
Ross is a little nervous that Sandringham’s success will see Odendaal, whom she refers to as “a station commander in a million”, being poached. “We have some great cops at Sandringham, but whenever we get someone good they tend to get promoted to deal with a troublesome station,” she says ruefully.
Bad cops?
Pearlie Joubert
“When you live in Khayelitsha, you are a prisoner. Here we are not free: 24 hours a day, seven days a week, you are at the mercy of what criminals do to you and what the police don’t do,” says Patience Mazibuku (54), who lives near the Khayelitsha police station in site B. “Often it feels as though there is no difference between how the cops and the criminals make one feel.”
Mazibuku is one of several residents that the M&G interviewed about this station, which was declared a presidential police station six years ago. A senior Cape Town police officer, who wanted to remain anonymous, said the station is “in crisis” and “having a hell of task and not winning yet”.
“It has nothing to do with the amount of cops and detectives stationed there; it has nothing to do with how many vehicles they have — they have enough of everything. Compare Sebokeng with Khayelitsha. They both serve similar areas under similar circumstances and Sebokeng’s police station is having amazing successes while Khayelitsha police station is still in big shit because they’re not doing their jobs. They’re still failing the community. They’re still too ineffective,” said the officer.
Mazibuku has been robbed at gunpoint six times in the past 13 months. “The first time I laid charges at the police station. No detective came to see me. A couple of months later I was beaten with a gun and robbed. Again I went to the station to lay a charge. The police asked me who robbed me. I said I don’t know those tsotsis. The constable behind the desk then told me to find out who robbed me and only then come and lay a charge. I didn’t report the other four robberies. What for? How can I walk around the taxi ranks in Khayelitsha looking for armed men?” asked a tearful Mazibuku. “Am I supposed to say: ‘Hey! You! Rubbish! Are you the gang who robbed me and tore my bra and shirt and felt under my breasts for the R10 you stole after beating me with your guns?’”
A month ago Commissioner David Molo was made head of Khayelitsha police station. He and his predecessor, Director Peter Jacobs, are, in stark contrast to the community, upbeat about the successes of the Khayelitsha police. “We’re taking the public’s perceptions very seriously, but people are being unfair.” Molo says his station is reaching its targets. Khayelitsha has been the murder capital of the country for many years, but this year they’ve been overtaken by Nyanga, and Molo believes this is as a result of good policing. “We’ve reduced our contact crimes by 11,8%. We’re policing a massive area of one million people living in 42km2, housing 1 500 shebeens where the majority of people are unemployed. Our stats are showing that we’re winning the war against crime,” said Molo.
But residents tell a vastly different story. They say the cops “as a matter of routine” tell callers they have no transport to get to the scene.
Sithembele Masimini (42), who was brutally attacked by three men inside his yard last Saturday evening, is still waiting for the police to come and take his statement. Masimini was stabbed several times in the head and back with broken bottles. One of his neighbours phoned the police, who arrived an hour later, by which time the attackers had fled. “They said they’d be back the next morning. It’s now one week later and I’ve not seen them,” said Masimini.
He and six friends drove around the next day searching for the attackers. They wanted to “give them a hell of a hiding and then dump them at the police station”, but the attackers managed to escape when they saw Masimini. “This is what we do here in Khayelitsha. We can’t report the crime because it’s pointless. The attackers get bail, then they’re released and then your life is in danger because they now know that you’ve laid a charge against them,” he said.