Police Minister Bheki Cele has lauded the increased focus on police intelligence for the dramatic 23.1% decrease in cash-in-transit crimes, in the last financial year.
“Intelligence has played a big role in infiltrating would-be robbers of cash vans and foiled their plans in many parts of the country,” he said.
Cele made the remarks while releasing the 2018/19 Crime Statistics in Parliament on Thursday. During the briefing, police management revealed that all categories of crime under aggravated robbery decreased.
The Minister said the National Stability Intervention Plan, which includes Crime Intelligence, Special task force, National Intervention Unit and Tactical Response Teams, for quick mobilization, has also gone a long way in tackling trio crimes.
“We believe that the rebuilding of crime Intelligence, Hawks and better working relationships with State Security Agency, National Prosecution Authority, Department of Justice and the Department of Defence will continue to produce favourable results,” he said.
The increased allocation of police resources to curb CITs and other trio crimes, he said, was yielding positive outcomes.
Going forward, he added, police will spread the focus and resources to areas of concern to ensure that results are improved.
“Another major intervention to address the scourge of murder is our specific focus to the Western Cape which has a high murder rate. We have introduced Operation Thunder and the Anti-Gang Unit respectively; and the SANDF intervention of Operation Lockdown is another government intervention to date.
Police visibility at Malls and other public areas, he said, has ensured that the country is a step closer to achieving goals set out in the National Development Plan (NDP).
“Except for robbery at residential premises, where we registered an increase of 0.8%. While we are not where we want to be, we are definitely not where we were, there are glimmers of improvements. We have recorded decreases in crimes of fear such as cash-in-transit heists, bank robberies, car and truck hijackings as well as robbery at non-residential premises.”
The crime statistics cover 21 crime categories. Among these are 17 community reported crimes and four other crime categories detected as a result of police action.
The scope of the crimes was reported at all 1154 police stations, including satellite stations and ports of entry nationwide. – SAnews.gov.za
