Lesufi’s crime-fighting cops: Can they really help?

Do we need to have a more effective crime prevention and crime combating policy? Do we need more cops on the streets?

Yes and yes.

Do we need to involve communities in the fight against criminals? Yes.

Lesufi’s crime-fighting cops

Is Gauteng premier Panyaza Lesufi’s newly minted force of 4 000 “crime prevention wardens” going to help provide positive answers to those questions?

The jury is still out on that … but the initial signs don’t look promising.

Despite having supposedly had months of training in security and law enforcement – as well as being made aware of duty to the community and respect for human rights – many of the recruits looked rough around the edges, to be kind … at least as far as their personal dress and marching were concerned.

READ: Unstoppable force? 3 000 crime-fighting heroes deployed in Gauteng

Smacks of corruption

Perhaps Lesufi was hoping that the high-powered brand-new BMWs would lend the unit a sense of pizazz that ordinary cars or bakkies would not.

The reason to select a premium car brand for people operating initially in townships and informal settlements was not elucidated, nor was the cost.

Given that under Lesufi’s watch as education MEC more than R400 million was spent on “sanitising” school classrooms across the province during the Covid pandemic, there is a legitimate concern that this whole venture might be yet another trough from which the comrades can “eat”.

Experts remain optimistic

On the other hand, experts we spoke to were cautiously optimistic, saying that more “boots on the ground” can only help the fight against crime, given that the SA Police are under-resourced.

It is also a positive that the wardens will be working at a grassroots level and may help change attitudes and make a difference.

But, these new versions of the late apartheid era “kitskonstabels”, or instant cops, might be the same sort of desperate – and, ultimately, ineffectual – measures taken by a government in panic mode.