Sowetan Reporter and Sapa

Sowetan Reporter and Sapa

Gauteng MEC for community safety Firoz Cachalia said yesterday that violent crimes had decreased while business robberies went up in the province.

Addressing the media in his six-monthly report, Cachalia said violent contact crime categories such as murder, attempted murder, rape, attempted rape, aggravated robbery and common robbery decreased within the target of between seven and 10 percent.

However, business robberies and truck hijackings had risen, but at a substantially lower rate than the previous year.

Cachalia also said that during the period July to December last year, 134514 calls for assistance were attended to; 7055 roadblocks were carried out; 5315 cordon and search operations had taken place; there were 3352 raids on suspects; 623019 vehicles were searched; and 1247313 people were searched.

As a result of these activities, 5873 firearms were confiscated and 1974 stolen vehicles recovered.

From July to December last year, a total of 34036 arrests were made for all violent contact crimes, an overall increase of 10 percent compared to the same period in 2006, Cachalia said.

Referring to the period January to June this year, Cachalia said the "Take Charge Campaign" would be intensified.

He said in the last six months of last year there was a further strengthening of information on the Gauteng police performance system.

"The system was based on information from police data bases and allowed us to track different categories of violent crime across each of the 130 police precincts in Gauteng."