Police Minister Bheki Cele says the beefing up of the SAPS crime-intelligence division has led to significant successes in the past year.
Cele, was speaking during a briefing on Sunday about take-down successes of police counter operations.
He said the SAPS crime-intelligence division has been rejuvenated and bolstered to identify and infiltrate syndicates.
“Intervention units and tactical response teams of the SAPS, continue to be capacitated along with the Directorate for Priority Crimes Investigations (Hawks). Overall detection of organised crime is sharper than ever.”
He said the combination of all these policing services was decisively responding to crime, especially to violent and serious crime.
Last week a gang of nine suspects, some of whom allegedly raped a teenage girl in front of her mother during a house robbery, were killed in a shoot-out with police in KwaZulu-Natal.
Cele said these take-down operations by the police were not isolated or coincidental but as a direct result of reliable and strong intelligence combined with the sharp tactical readiness of trained police units.
“From April 2023 to date, 1171 intelligence-led take-downs were conducted by the SAPS. These specialised operations involve weeks and at times months, of planning, surveillance and monitoring of targets. They involve highly skilled detectives working together with members of tactical units, who execute arrests.”
The minister cited examples across the country, including the arrest of senior officials from Nongoma Local Municipality in KZN on charges related to theft, fraud and money laundering.
In addition, Cele said through Operation Shanela police on the ground were continuously conducting high density operations in identified high crime areas across the country.
“Exactly 551506 suspects have been arrested for various crimes across the country since May 2023 when Operation Shanela was introduced,” he said, adding that almost 70 000 high-density crime prevention and combating operations were conducted in the last 11 months.
Cele said these operations have resulted in the arrest of 8 563 suspected rapists, 6 045 murder suspects and 4410 have been arrested for attempted murder.
Gareth Newham, head of the Justice and Violence Prevention Programme at the Institute for Security Studies, said the figures given by the police minister are impressive. “It shows that there are many hard-working and dedicated police members.”
However, he said arrest numbers do not necessarily mean that the police were effectively tackling crimes.
He said the key was whether the arrests resulted in successful criminal prosecutions.
Newham highlighted that unlawful arrests by police was a key contributing factor to the R648 million paid out to victims of unlawful police conduct last year.
“The key success measure of whether the police are arresting the people causing the most harm will be a reduction in the murder rate.
“Also, while these examples of good police work are to be welcomed, we don’t see the steps needed to ensure that the organisation performs well as a whole,” he said.
He said if all 183 000 SAPS personnel are working effectively we should be seeing much better overall results.
“For example, despite the SAPS budget increasing by over 80% since 2012, the ability of the police to solve murder dockets declined by over 60%. Last year, the police could only solve 12.4% of murder dockets,” said Newham.
Newham added that there were also very high levels of corruption in the SAPS which substantially undermined the good work of honest police members.
“We need to see big improvements in overall detective performance measures and many hundreds of corrupt offices being dismissed from the SAPS each year and successfully prosecuted if we are to see noticeable improvements in policing overall and sustainable reductions in serious violent crimes,” he said.
The Mercury