Cape Town - Residents in the city’s crime hot spots are being shortchanged because law enforcement staff are forced to deal with ongoing service delivery protests in other areas.
One-third of the City of Cape Town’s police officers had to be redeployed from their usual activities to deal with unrest and poo protests on major freeways, said JP Smith, mayoral committee member for safety and security.
Mayor Patricia de Lille said: “Hours of law enforcement time is being taken up to protect the city against these actions.” But the city would continue to rely on its police and the law to ensure that services were rendered.
The N2 has been closed numerous times in the past two months as protesters have burnt tyres and thrown human waste from portable flush toilet containers at motorists.
The toll that these clashes with disgruntled residents’ from informal settlements has taken on the city’s law enforcement resources, in terms of staff and financial loss, can be seen in the latest quarterly report submitted to the safety and security portfolio committee last week.
All the city’s law enforcement units have been affected. Metro officers had to respond to 189 protests between April and June, up 231 percent from the 57 actions in the previous quarter.
The city is divided into four policing areas, and three of these reflect a drop in operations because staff were forced to deal with protesters.
Only in area east, which includes Khayelitsha, Macassar, Strand, Somerset West and Delft, was there a marked increase in operational activities in this period. There were 620 operations in June, up from the 444 in May, as protest action in these areas intensified.
For area west, however, operations decreased from 1 282 in April to 1 024 in May, and then to a significantly lower 724 in June. The reason, the report says, “can be directly attributed to the ongoing protest action on the N2 and R300 where staff are assigned to work on a 24-hour basis”.
In area north, operations dropped from 934 in May to 533 in June.
Fewer fines have also been issued. According to the notes for area west, the drop in fines from 1 840 in April to 1 480 in May is because staff have been assigned to deal with protests on a 24-hour basis, and are therefore “not performing normal patrol duties in the area”.
The number of patrols at hot spots showed a slight decline in May and again in June as officers had to concentrate their resources on the protest action. Hot spot patrols include activities at informal settlements and informal trading areas, and at illegal dumping areas and open spaces.
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A group of protesters barricaded the N2 and flung portable toilets and faeces at vehicles. Photo: Ross Jansen
Cape Argus
There were 2 106 hot spot patrols in May, but this dropped to 740 in June owing to assistance rendered on the N2 instead.
Officers from the Informal Trading Unit have been deployed to the N2 and Philippi during protests to prevent damage to infrastructure, the report noted. In May, the unit removed 2 000 tyres stacked next to the N2 near Nyanga that were intended for burning during a protest.
The city’s rapid response unit was forced to curtail its visits to council buildings in June because it had to escort staff from the water and sanitation department to informal settlements so they could safely clean toilets.
“The unit was also required to escort and stand down with the electricity department teams in a number of townships so that staff could do necessary repairs and installations amid prevalent threats of intimidation,” said the report.
Although the number of no-go areas for city cleaning staff has dropped from 16 to just four, law enforcement is still required to ensure that the work is done safely, said Ernest Sonnenberg, mayoral committee member for utility services.
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