Today, the City of Cape Town’s Safety and Security Directorate presented its Metropolitan Police Department’s Annual Police Plan to Provincial Parliament. This comes off the back of a successful week in which 201 arrests took place, including the confiscation of an illegal firearm by a wanted suspect, plus 4 additional cases of possession of illegal firearms and attempted murder of a police officer.
MPP Reagen Allen comments: “The work by the Metro Police Department is widely known for its Traffic Service Operations and Law Enforcement Services, but their crucially important work with regard to Crime Prevention is known to a much lesser extent. Adding to its strong security efforts, the City today revealed a visionary crime prevention strategy under the Special Operations Division, which includes a K9 Unit, the Gang & Drug Task Team, and a Tactical Response Unit.
In its targets for the 2021/2022 Financial Year, the City plans to conduct 2 060 crime-orientated operations in high risk areas to improve safety, including responses from drug dealing to other violent crimes. These operations are initiated by the Metro Police but conducted jointly with the SAPS.
The City is also responsible for the firearm management of all metro police and city government owned Firearms and Ammunition within the City of Cape Town and performs 12 verification audits annually. We have seen significant efforts by Law Enforcement Officers where it showed improvement in the illegal firearm recovery rate by over 370% as previously reported. This is in stark contrast with the leaky, unreliable system used by the police service at a national level when clamping down on the availability of illegal firearms. These service delivery efforts go a long way to support the hard work of officers on the ground and address inefficiencies in the police system.
Our commitment to supporting the improvement of safety in communities is made clear in that by the end of this year, in partnership with the Western Cape Government and the City of Cape Town, over 1 000 additional Learner Law Enforcement Officers will be deployed across the Metro and specifically in crime hotspot areas.
As the DA in the Western Cape, we will use oversight measures at the legislature and closely monitor the performance of the department during the year, as well as its collaboration with the SAPS in the interest of creating a safer Western Cape. We will continue to hold all security services in the province to account to ensure progress is made and has a real impact on crime levels in the province.”
