A security committee has heard that the Western Cape is suffering from a shortage of officers and the unequal distribution of staff across police stations.
|||Cape Town - A shortage of officers and the unequal distribution of staff across police stations continue to be the two biggest administrative and logistical headaches for the Western Cape’s police management.
Briefing members of the legislature’s safety and security standing committee on Tuesday, deputy provincial police commissioner Major-General Sharon Japhta said 39 percent of police stations in the Western Cape had staff shortages of 10 percent or more, while 19 percent were over-staffed by 10 percent or more.
“There is a distribution issue and our numbers are becoming fewer every day,” said Japhta.
“However, we are addressing the distribution problem and have completed visits to all cluster commanders for them to ‘right size’ staff at stations. We have an unequal distribution at some stations and shortages at others. We’ve had this unequal distribution for years and it won’t be a quick process to rectify.”
There are currently 16 628 police officers in the Western Cape, 10 280 of whom are deployed to do visible policing, 3 369 for detective services and the rest are support services staff.
In December, provincial police commissioner Lieutenant-General Arno Lamoer told the legislature there were 16 804 operational police officers deployed in visible policing, the detectives branch and support services; meaning since January nearly 200 officers left the force, were dismissed, retired or had died.
No police reservists or new staff had been recruited for nearly two years, Japhta said.
“The problem is not at the entry level, it’s the middle to senior posts – level 8 to 11 that we need,” she said.
Major-General Peter Jacobs, deputy provincial police commissioner in charge of operations, said officers were deployed where the need was the greatest.
“In the Western Cape, it is standard to have one patrol vehicle per sector. Detailed deployment varies depending on the situation in the area, for example where there is a flare-up in gang violence.”
Japhta said the areas which had the biggest population growth over the past 11 years since the last census were Delft, Mfuleni, Kraaifontein and Milnerton.
“We only got the census numbers and were able to populate our system with the new information three weeks ago,” she said. “So we are working on the new census figures and will be aligning resources with the population, number of unemployed people, number of churches, schools, courts, public transport hubs, liquor outlets, and so on, over the next few months.”
Mark Wiley, DA MPL and committee chairman, said there were “serious staff shortages” at some key police stations in the peninsula especially over weekends. He said that over one weekend in Ocean View not a single police officer reported for duty.
“The reason why no one pitched was because the national guideline for police deployment was not being enforced,” Wiley said. “In the south Peninsula, three police stations lost 23 officers over the past 12 months and none of them have been replaced.”
Jacobs responded that the police could only deploy based on the need in the area and the available resources.
Major-General Renee Fick, the province’s deputy commissioner for physical resource management, said there was currently no vehicle shortage at any of the police stations in the Western Cape. “We have 4 000 vehicles at stations across the province, and that’s ample to service all the communities,” Fick said.
Wiley quizzed Fick on the state of police cells, which he said was in a “shocking” condition.
“In Beaufort West the cell doors can’t even lock but they have suspects in there. The walls are cracked, you can fit your fingers in them and the lighting in those cells is very bad. What is being done about it?”
Fick said her department had sent a request to the national department for maintenance repairs valued at over R10m to be done at 53 police stations in the province.
clayton.barnes@inl.co.za
Cape Argus