Despite the Midrand Police Station being too small for the community’s needs, there were no plans to build a second or satellite station to serve the area.
This was revealed during the Democratic Alliance (DA) Shadow Deputy Minister of Public Works and Infrastructure Madeleine Hicklin’s visit to the station, along with other DA members, as part of the Gauteng Police Watch Survey in late July.
In a recent response to that visit, Hicklin said, “The current [police station] building is too small to deal with the growing population of the area, and parking is an absolute nightmare with residents having to park outside of the police precinct. Midrand station is a Brigadier station, but despite this there are no current plans for a second station or a satellite station, to alleviate Midrand citizens’ concerns.”
She added when the Mall of Africa opened in 2016, there was talk of a satellite station opening at the mall when business-related crime in this area soared. However, the crime had since largely been brought under control through VisPol operations.
During the DA visit, Midrand Police Station Commander Brigadier Molefe David Tsotsotso said while there was always room for improvement, the station was working well. He added while the ideal number of police personnel at the station was 343, the station currently had a staff complement of 294, including 87 detectives.
“While we are working well with the resources we have, the ideal would be to have more personnel and more vehicles. But budget constraints determine that we must be satisfied with what we have at the moment. Our building is small and we would have issues accommodating more personnel. We even have some divisions and personnel working in containers in our parking area,” said Tsotsotso.
“Parking for personnel and the public who need to report crimes or simply to get documents verified or certified is also a very big concern. Just hosting you [DA] today put a strain on our parking. We had to ask personnel to park across the road. Parking is a very grave problem here.”
He revealed that each detective at the station had between 50 and 100 dockets on their desk, with those detectives dealing with more serious crimes having fewer dockets than those dealing with drunken driving cases, for example.
“It’s about prioritising correctly and apportioning work according to the seriousness of the dockets being investigated,” concluded Tsotsotso.
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