21 February 2007

South Africa's community policing forums are to play a bigger role in the fight against crime in the country, including helping to monitor the performance of local police stations.

Briefing journalists in Cape Town last week, Safety and Security Minister Charles Nqakula said the role of the country's community policing forums would be broadened to include the justice and correctional services systems. A framework would soon be put in place to provide more resources to community policing forums, and to enable forums to help assess police performance.

Nqakula said strengthening partnerships between communities and the police would help the police to establish local policing priorities, and to combat "social" crime in the country.

Since crime takes place at community level, the minister said, the community almost invariably knew who was involved. He said the government aimed to recruit as many people as possible for community policing forums, complemented by a reservist system. "We want patrols 24 hours a day."

South Africa began "localising" its policing in 2006, equipping local police stations with better resources, redeploying area-level officers to local stations, and promoting experienced detectives in a way that keeps them doing real police work rather than administrative work.

Nqakula said the strategy was complemented by a tightening of the command and control capacity of the police, with new hi-tech systems allowing senior management in Pretoria to track activities at every police station in the country in real time.

Source: BuaNews