Help Tongaat SAPS help you

Community involvement would help the police operate more efficiently with the best of their resources.

According to Tongaat SAPS station commander Col Santha Moodley, the assistance of the local Community Policing Forum (CPF) together with the local Neighbourhood Watch groups has helped keep their 152 square kilometre precinct well policed.

The Tongaat station has 32 vehicles and 119 staff, including administration staff, and usually is able to respond quickly to call-outs, but can strengthen their force even further if the community steps in to assist, said Col Moodley.

“With technology and communication tools like WhatsApp and Facebook, the public can assist not only by consistent reporting, but by understanding how the station works and which resources are being used at any given time,” she said.

The protocol for reporting cases and prioritising vehicles is best understood when the public understand why resources are allocated for different reasons.

Col Moodley said they need to juggle responding to serious cases of murder, shootings and stabbings, protest action, robberies in progress, domestic violence and accidents, as well as petty theft and break-ins.

Tongaat CPF chairman Nazir Sadack echoed the sentiments from Col Moodley and reiterated that the public would benefit from being involved in the Neighbourhood Watch and CPF meetings.

“Communities need to understand how the police resources are prioritised and used, which they can if they take part in the local CPF talks and gatherings with the police,” said Sadack.

“When a house has been broken into, for example, people panic and report to the police that they have been robbed. The case is flagged as urgent and a vehicle is sent from another scene where it could otherwise have been used better.”

With the scale of area and the road conditions that the police officers need to navigate in their vehicles, Sadack said it would help Tongaat SAPS if the public reported cases regularly but also correctly.

“When the public hear that a vehicle is unavailable, it is not that there are no vehicles, as there are, but they have been allocated for more urgent scenes and will attend to you when they can.”

Col Moodley said that as their vehicles experience wear and tear the turnaround time to get vehicles roadworthy again does take longer, hampering the station’s ability to attend numerous crime scenes at the same time.

“When we send vehicles to get repaired they do not come back as quickly as we need them to,” said Moodley, who said that the station could certainly benefit from more vehicles.

According to the SAPS website, tenders have been available for the supply and maintenance of police vehicles nationally since January 31.

To get in touch with the CPF and be added to the forum, contact Sadack at 063 050 8721.

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