METRO Police officers are being called upon to enforce nuisance bylaws.
DA Councillor Nicole Graham said the bylaw, which became effective in March 2016, dealt with a variety of nuisances, including noise and littering. However, she said it appeared that while Metro Police had a number of committed and dedicated officers, the highest levels of it management were clearly not committed to implementing and enforcing the bylaw.
Graham said Metro Police officers currently didn’t have noise monitoring equipment which exacerbated the problem. She said she had raised the issue in council and had ascertained that only 158 fines had been issued for noise violations over the past year.
“This is an average of less than two fines per ward for an entire year. It is completely unacceptable. Councillors are inundated with complaints about noise and chaos in their communities,”she said.
She said it also appeared that Metro Police typically issued two warnings before issuing an actual fine, which caused great frustration for complainants.
“It is even more concerning that not a single fine has been issued for contravening Section 16 of the bylaws which creates an offence for allowing a property to be used in sucv a way that it creates a nuisance.
This would be an effective mechanism to deal with landlords who live elsewhere but allow their tenants to create disturbances, which has become a common problem across the city’s suburbs,”she said.
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