Lindsay Dentinger
10 July 2009
Cape Town — Crime levels in the city will not decrease before the 2010 World Cup, and tourists will be a soft target that attract criminals, says the city's new police chief, Robert Young.
But Young says he has a plan to reduce the opportunity to commit crime: saturating the city with Metro Police officers.
Young, who took office a week ago, said it was a case of "too little, too late" to try to introduce measures that would result in a dramatic turn-around of the status quo.
"It was even too late to start training new recruits to bolster the city's 520-strong force.
He said visible policing was the city's answer to minimising crime during the 2010 World Cup.
"We must take away the opportunity to commit the crimes. It is resource expensive to do this, but we have to try to have a continuous presence of policing," said Young.
"It's a fact that tourists attract crime. It's no use people saying they don't, because they do.
"Tourists are a bigger target (for criminals) because they do not practice target-hardening like ordinary South Africans do."
The city has been without a permanent Metro Police chief for eight months. Young was previously the municipal police chief in the Swartland before he took up his new post in the city.
He said he would adopt an integrated approach to policing in the Metro which, despite having resources available to it, had been too fragmented in the past.
Eighteen months ago the city unbundled its police department into three units - law enforcement, crime prevention and traffic control.
Young said he wanted to see police officers working across their designated sections in order to better manage crime.
"We need to start taking our streets back: 2010 is not the (only) reason we must police. We have our own issues and environment."
But the police's strategy for managing crime before the World Cup would not be a long-term solution to reducing crime in the city, Young said.
The Metro Police would have to become more proactive about stopping violent crime which stemmed from anti-social behaviour.
However, "we are not going to win on the cause of social behaviour which leads to crime", Young said.
He said that while drug and alcohol abuse were major sources of crime in the city, the Metro Police would focus on targeting drug suppliers rather than users.
It was necessary to change the patterns in which police worked, Young said.
The city's Metro Police was aiming for a 10 percent increase in drug-related arrests and an overall 10 percent reduction of all incidents of crime in the city over the next year.
Young said citizens had a misconception about the duties of Metro Police.
"We are not in competition with the SAPS. Our main mandate is to prevent crime, not to investigate it," he explained.
The city would soon be advertising posts for 20 new constables and 17 superintendents which, in turn, would result in further vacancies at the levels of sergeant and constable.
Young said he hoped the experienced officers who had left the force would apply to return to the service.
Since the unbundling, Young said, the Metro Police unit was losing staff to the traffic unit.
The Metro Police had struggled to create a positive image for itself since its inception in 2001. But Young said he believed that this was because it had not been given a fair opportunity to establish itself properly and had had no "best practices" strategy to follow.
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