Carletonville is the only police precinct in the area to have made it onto a national crime list released this week.
The statistics for 2019/2020 were officially released on 31 July and covered all the crimes for which offenders can be prosecuted. The national police service did not release all the crime statistics of each police station but released the lists of the top-30 police stations with the highest number of a specific type of crime.
The Carletonville police station came in at number 20 on the list for the 30 police stations in the country with the highest number of cases for people driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs. Some 489 of these cases were reported during the past year, which was 36 per cent higher than the previous year.
There has also been a steady increase in these cases over the past 10 years. The station with the most incidents in this category was Durban Central with 2,562 reported cases during the past year. Driving under the influence of these substances is classified as a crime detected as a result of police action. Such crimes are usually not reported by the public but only get on the books after the police apprehend suspects. Other crimes in this category are the illegal possession of firearms and ammunition, drug-related crimes and sexual offences detected as a result of police action.
In the 2010/2011 police year, only 138 such cases were reported, but the numbers have been climbing ever since.
The police stations in our area are Carletonville, Fochville, Khutsong and Wedela. Although there is also a police station in Welverdiend, it is only considered to be a satellite station of Carletonville.
Some of our neighbouring towns fared much worse, however.
Potchefstroom ranks 16th on the list for commercial crimes, 24th for property-related crimes and 28th for theft out of or from motor vehicles. Randfontein is second on the nation-al record for cash in transit robbery, fourth for kidnapping, 11th for assault to do grievous bodily harm (GBH), 28th for contact crimes (attempted murder, murder, rape, common assault and assault GBH, 20th for common assault, 27th for community-reported serious crimes, 23rd on the list for contact-related crimes, 19th for malicious damage to property and 30th for all theft not named elsewhere. Vereeniging is 26th on the list for truck hijacking.
According to the website, Crime Stats SA, there were a total of 4,033 crimes reported in the Carletonville policing precinct during the past year.
Meanwhile, there were 2,475 reported cases in Khutsong, 1,957 in Fochville and only 541 in Wedela.