Lamoer lashed by fuming Nyanga forum

Cape Town - Provincial police commissioner Arno Lamoer has come under fire from the Nyanga Community Policing Forum (CPF) which said it felt insulted because police did not take seriously the concerns of the area’s residents.

Lamoer appeared before Parliament’s portfolio committee on police on Wednesday to explain the province’s turnaround strategy to address policing deficiencies which had been identified during an oversight visit the committee conducted last month.

The visit had been prompted by complaints residents of Nyanga had against the Nyanga police station and which they took to the Nyanga CPF. When the committee visited the station two weeks ago it heard of severe staff shortages which forced detectives to carry heavy case loads. Concerns had also been noted during the visit about the number of attacks on a stretch of the N2 policed by the Nyanga police, and a lack of a clear strategy to prevent such incidents.

Martin Makhasi, secretary of the CPF, told the committee on Wednesday he found it strange to hear Lamoer saying that police crime intelligence had improved in the Nyanga cluster.

Makhasi highlighted two recent incidents, in the same week, which crime intelligence had failed to detect. One was the protest by taxi drivers, which had put a lot of “residents at risk”. It was public knowledge but the police did not know about it, Makhasi said.

In the second incident he said residents were “subjected” to shooting for five hours near a church where a funeral took place on Saturday. Despite making calls to the police the shooting continued. The police confiscated only one gun.

“I want the commissioner to know that we seriously feel insulted that they can come here and claim that things have improved, but in the eyes of the community, hooligans are in control,” Makhasi said.

He also said the figures presented by Lamoer were different to those the forum got from the police station.

For instance, Lamoer gave a figure of 16 officers that were away from the station while the station said 30. Also, the number of 148 visible policing officers, provided by Lamoer to the committee, differed from the 128 the station said it had, Makhasi said.

CPF member Mawethu Gwija also questioned Lamoer’s statement of improved intelligence when Nyanga was “still regarded as the murder capital”.

Lamoer earlier told the committee that Nyanga Police Station would soon get 46 additional officers for the 2014/15 financial year. A total of 35 would be deployed to visible policing, 10 would be new detectives and one officer would be for support service.

Nyanga currently has 56 detectives investigating 9 000 cases. There is also a shortage of visible policing. The bulk of complaints by residents relate to poor investigations.

Lamoer said they were trying to reduce this with the re-establishment of uniformed detectives, where new recruits would be assigned to deal with the less serious crimes.

Committee chairman Francois Beukman asked Lamoer about the role of crime intelligence taking into account destructive protests by taxi drivers. He said overall the role of intelligence had improved.

Cape Times

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