WHITE RIVER – “We must continue to make a concerted effort, together with stakeholders and communities, to remove illegal firearms from the society,” says Phahlane during a media briefing held on March 7 at Ingwenyama Conference Resort.
“We want to zoom to 20 clusters across the country which hugely contribute to trio crimes, including robbery with aggravating circumstances, car hijackings, house robberies and business robberies which is of a serious concern.” says Phahlane.
He added that resources, budget, vehicles and personnel will be allocated for that course.
“Police visibility will be heightened in certain areas, we will also mobilise the Metro and traffic police to those areas,” he said.
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He also called on the community to assist the police in realizing the decrease of the trio crimes by reporting criminal activities to the police or calling the police’s toll free number 086 001 0111.
This took place during the SAPS management’s 2017/2018 strategic planning session and development of a National Trio Crimes Action Plan. More than 350 generals from across the country attended the meeting.
He mentioned that crime statistics from April 1 to December 31, 2016 showed a decrease in the 17 community-reported crimes which are grouped into the categories of contact crime, contact-related crime, property-related crime and other serious crime.
“The serious contact crimes of murder, attempted murder, sexual offences, serious assault, common assault and common robbery all decreased. This leads us to believe that our back-to-basics approach to policing is making an impact on the crime picture in our country,” he said.
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