By Amy Musgrave
Portfolio police committee chairperson Ian Cameron is concerned by the continued increase in mass murders in South Africa.
He said on Friday that they highlighted the inadequacies within the police’s crime intelligence unit.
Cameron was commenting following two mass shootings in Cape Town, where seven people were killed in Bishop Lavis on Thursday and five people were killed in Atlantis.
There have also been mass killings reported in the Eastern Cape and the KwaZulu-Natal, where the worst incident involved the death of 18 people in Lusikisiki.
“The increase in mass killings in the Eastern Cape and Western Cape point to the need to capacitate the crime intelligence services both with funding and human capital that will enable the unit to proactively prevent these crimes from happening,” Cameron said in a statement.
“The committee has consistently stressed the need to properly capacitate the intelligence and detective units as they are potent tools that can be used in the fight against crime.”
The committee has also reiterated the need for collaboration with provincial and local governments to ensure that these spheres establish focused strategies to deal with emerging crime trends in their communities.
“It is for this reason that we wholeheartedly welcomed the intentions of the Draft National Policing Policy, which highlighted the importance of collaboration, and these murders provide an opportunity to share investigative capacity.
“Also, the formation and training of specialised units to tackle crimes like gang violence in the Western Cape should be considered,” he said.
The increase in mass murders provided an opportunity to implement several Safer Cities initiatives, which were signed between the police and provincial and local governments.
Cameron said the signed agreement had established the necessary framework to fight crime. It was now time to activate the plans and ensure that criminality was confronted head-on.
The latest murders in Cape Town are suspected to be gang related.
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