New mass killings highlight intelligence shortfalls: committee

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