'We aren't struggling to arrest criminals,' police say

Police say they are not struggling to arrest perpetrators of crime, citing the 1.2m suspects arrested for crimes ranging from murder to assault with intent to do grievous bodily harm as proof.

The SAPS was responding to a public outcry on why there had been so much police muscle on display during a protest on Monday while the country struggles to curb rampant crime on a daily basis.

According to the 2021/22 annual police statistics, more than 1.5m crimes were committed across the country. National police spokesperson Brig Athlenda Mathe said 1.2m suspects were arrested in the same period for various crimes. 

"In the last three months more than 5,000 perpetrators of GBVF [gender-based violence and femicide] were arrested by police," she said. 

Mathe said the National Joint Operational and Intelligence Structure (Natjoints) is working with various law enforcement agencies and private security to enhance their response to crime.

On Monday, during a protest by the EFF,  the full capabilities of law enforcement was put on public display with unprecedented mobilisation of resources, coordination and use of technology to respond to threats of violence and disorder.

Police and Prisons Civil Rights Union (Popcru) spokesperson Richard Mamabolo said resources were a major constraint in fighting crime on a daily basis. He said resources were mobilised because the protest was planned ahead and known to the police.

"The reason there was such sufficient manpower is because police would have planned in time and identified all the areas that would have been targeted... You won't see this on a daily basis because 30% of the over 155,000 officers are office based, less boots on the ground, and the problem is also not enough allocation of resources to police stations and this makes it not easy for police to be at all places all the time," Mamabolo said.

"We have challenges at police stations... government has cut SAPS's budget and this has an impact on the number of police recruited into the service. There are some police stations where vehicles have not been serviced for over six months."

Mamabolo said lack of regular training of ordinary police officers to be up to speed with criminal trends was another problem facing police in fighting crime.

A police officer who was part of the planning and deployment during Monday's protest, who wished not to be named, said more resources including personnel were brought in to deal with a perceived threat on Monday.

"From Friday, officers were asked to reschedule their leave and the task was to monitor any threat before and after the shutdown. Ordinarily, people are deployed in terms of their policing precincts to do crime prevention or attend to complaints. On a normal day the challenge is manpower because some are working while others are on leave and rest days," said the officer.

DA MP and member of parliament’s portfolio committee for police Andrew Whitfield said there was no reason why SAPS shouldn’t be able to make similar deployments on a more regular basis to demonstrate their presence from a policing or coordination point of view. 

“Certainly Natjoints can’t be deployed everywhere but certainly SAPS could be demonstrating more visible policing,” he said. 

Whitfield said for Monday’s deployments, probably a lot more personnel were taken out of offices and put on the street, deployment that wouldn’t ordinarily happen. 

He said he did not believe there were any impediments to visible policing except a lack of leadership. 

“The secret to the continued success will be on the ability on the minister, the national police commissioner... to form these partnership with people who want to protect infrastructure which is how we can combat crime in the future,” Whitfield said. 

Willem Els, a former policeman and senior training coordinator at the Institute for Security Studies, said the biggest problem facing police in fighting crime is operational leadership.

"The ratio of police officers to the population show that their numbers are not favourable and we are not where we are supposed to be.  What happened on Monday cannot be done on a continuous basis and only short term, because people have to rest at some time and if it continues every day it will have huge cost implications," he said.  – Additional reporting by Nomazima Nkosi.