PROVINCIAL Commissioner of KwaZulu-Natal, Lt Gen Mmamonnye Ngobeni, is confident the South African Police Service will keep people safe this festive season.
At the launch of Operation Duty Calls, the SAPS’s Festive Season Operation at Wembezi on 23 October, Ngobeni made a commitment to ensure that the people in South Africa are and feel safe, and since then, a team of experienced detectives from the SAPS head office in Pretoria have studied several hundred crime dockets with the KwaZulu-Natal detectives including serious cases such as murder, attempted murder, car hijacking, truck hijacking, cash-in-transit heists, bank robbery, house robbery, business robbery, common robbery, rape, sexual assault, common assault, theft of motor vehicle, theft (other), theft of live stock, burglary (residence), burglary (business), shoplifting, arson, malicious damage to property and fraud.
“We can announce the intensive work done has yielded phenomenal successes. I am proud to say that the cluster tracking teams together with detectives throughout the province have worked around the clock this week and arrested over 830 suspects in connection with these crime categories,” said Ngobeni.
Ngobeni said it was that time of the year when one could expect the abuse of drugs and alcohol to increase, which ultimately contributes to other serious crime such as murder, assault and domestic violence.
“We are keeping a firm watch in this area and we continue to achieve significant successes with arresting those involved in the drug underworld.These operations are not the first and they certainly will not be the last. Further announcements of this nature will be made regularly as we progress into the festive season,” said Ngobeni.
She said SAPS has committed to continue focusing its efforts on six key pillars, aggravated/armed robberies, firearms, liquor and second-hand goods as well as safety at sports and recreational events act enforcement, crimes against women, children as well as persons with disabilities, wanted suspects, road safety enforcement (traffic management) and border security.
“We know that someone, somewhere, somehow knows something about a crime that is about to be committed and we rely on those people to come forward with information. I would also like to assure of the people of KwaZulu-Natal that vacation leave for police officials over this period is restricted to ensure that we have sufficient police members ready to deal with any and all eventualities that may occur over this period,” said Ngobeni.
