JP Smith tears into national police leaders
July 24 2013 at 10:05am
INLSA
Mayco member for
safety and security JP Smith
Caryn Dolley
MAYCO member for safety and security JP
Smith has accused police leaders and the national government of doing
“everything in their power to prevent the Western Cape from winning the battle
against gangs”.
And he says the police’s crime
intelligence “has all but been dismantled on a national level” and is “in a
very poor state” in the province.
Smith made these allegations yesterday
in a response to a Cape Times query about the city’s role in clamping down on
gang violence, which has recently flared up in a number of areas, including
Manenberg.
Police Minister Nathi Mthethwa’s
spokesman, Zweli Mnisi, said he would not “stoop” to respond to Smith’s
comments and instead referred the Cape Times to a statement he sent out about
how police were tackling drug abuse and dealing.
Smith’s attack on the police comes days
after the police ministry accused Community Safety MEC Dan Plato of “pure
grandstanding” and trying to embarrass police in the province. This was after
Plato had held a press conference and released police-to-population ratio
statistics that he said he got from provincial police commissioner Arno
Lamoer’s office, something which Lamoer, who was not invited to the press
conference, at first denied.
Yesterday Smith said there might be “a
political dimension to gang conflict”.
“We have seen strange interventions and
arbitrary
and possibly illegal policing actions
by specifically one senior SAPS officer relating to certain gangs,” he said.
Smith would not say to whom he was
referring. “Likewise, national government and the politicised leadership of
SAPS have done everything in their power to prevent the Western Cape from
winning this battle against crime.”
Smith listed examples:
l President Jacob Zuma refusing to
deploy the army to gang hot spots after Premier Helen Zille asked him to do so
to help police combat gang violence in Lavender Hill and Hanover Park.
l Nathi Mthethwa opposing the
commission of inquiry into high crime levels in Khayelitsha set up by Zille in
August. The matter is set to be heard in the Constitutional Court.
l Attempts to do away with the Metro
Police in the draft Green Paper on Policing which detailed the possibility of
“single policing” in the country, suggesting Metro Police were “less subject to
strong accountability” and this “poses serious risks to our democracy”.
Smith said policing was primarily a
national competency and that “almost the entire criminal justice system”,
including SAPS, the Justice Department, the Correctional Services Department
and the National Prosecuting Authority, fell under national government.
He said this meant that the Metro
Police, which fell under the city’s control, would never be able to take over
the policing role that SAPS was “supposed to play”.
“The problem arises as you go up the
food chain in SAPS when the leadership becomes increasingly politicised.”
He said conviction rates, especially
when it came to gang-related murders, were “appaling” and in this regard the
national government had “failed in their management of SAPS”.
caryn.dolley@inl.co.za
