Norwood’s Community Policing Forum partnership with police yields results

Norwood’s Police Station commander, Colonel Logan Govender confirmed that crime in the area decreased by 18% in a sector 1 CPF meeting held on February 19 at Melrose Arch.

Govender explained that police officers noticed that contact crimes were often committed by people who consumed alcohol.

“All the station commanders of the Johannesburg district met with the Johannesburg senior magistrate and reviewed the prices of fines because R300 fines were no longer cutting it. Fines needed to have more bite, they have increased to R1 000, and non-compliance is now charged at R2 500.”

The station commander said one of his ways of effectively policing and decreasing the crime in the area since his appointment was meeting with security companies every week instead of once a month because he wanted to deal with crime while it was still hot.

Govender said every police station was rated out of five stars and Norwood was always rated with one star as a detective branch. “From April 2023 until now we are rated on four stars, from being ranked 141 provincially we are now sitting at number 25.

Norwood’s acting CPF chairman, Larry Marks said the forum had a lot of work to do in terms of the community being able to communicate with the forum and vice versa to be aware of the issues of our area and respond accordingly.

Marks said Sector 1’s challenges included:

• Abandoned houses that vagrants invaded
• Street beggars who were involved in crimes in the area
• Homeless people who lived on freeways and opened settlements along Melrose and Birnam

He emphasized that the CPF was established to be a watchdog of the police and to help the police do its job, as well as to watch and ensure that the police provided the community with the service it would like.

Community in Blue (CIB) lead patroller, Beverly Finger said the patrolling team was made up of eight members, including a social worker and paramedics.

“We usually walked through parks to make sure we are hands-on and see things properly. We have social projects in Norwood, feeding schemes, in Orange Grove we have social work happening.”

Finger added that the CIB also had a City Power project where patrollers locked open and unattended substations to limit criminal activity.

Norwood’s CPF executive chairman, Wayne Preston added that some challenges faced by the forum included:

• The community was as involved as it should be with the forum
• Required more funding
• Consistency to better the forum so it can do more in the community

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