The Tshwane MMC for safety has adopted a tough stance against corruption within the ranks of metro police officers, promising rotten eggs would be dismissed.
“We need to start getting rid of corrupt TMPD officers, we are sitting with a lot of them and I promise we are getting rid of them.”
Safety MMC Karen Meyer vowed to east residents during a Pretoria Country Club meeting on Monday evening that corruption and bribery would soon be a thing of the past.
This, after residents echoed that corruption has seemingly entrenched itself in the department, and muggings and robberies in their area rampant because of a lack of police visibility.
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A resident told Tshwane mayor Stevens Mokgalapa and the MMC that they were concerned at the spate of burglaries.
“I have worked in England and Australia and I could leave anything, anywhere, anytime. I could leave an open garage at any time and nobody would walk into it.
“Here you can have all the security and you get broken into three times.”
A Waterkloof Heights resident said crime in the area had spiked in the recent weeks with robberies at “odd hours”.
“They happen at 10am on a Sunday, odd hours like 4am. We have had residents firing warning shots early in the morning.
“We are high tax and rates contributors and I appeal that we work together, we have had lots of meetings as concerned residents we don’t sleep with both eyes closed due to fear.”
“You can see the number of for ‘sale signs’. It is alarming, people are moving out of Pretoria or the country.”
A recent report had indicated a spike in property crime, and that criminals were now targeting new areas.
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TMPD overhaul
Meyer said the mayoral committee had last week approved a new strategic framework to change every aspect of the Tshwane metro police operations.
Tracking devices to stamp out corruption
Meyer said that the public had lost faith in the department, “general feeling is TMPD is useless, easily bribed, little visibility”.
That is all soon to change as she said a new integrated management system would be introduced, linking every aspect of TMPD to allow the metro to “track officers to see where they are”.
She said this would help when a bribery complaint is received “we will know who the officers are, where they are, who else was involved, and be able to confirm that they were where you said they were when they asked for a bribe”.
She said the system would enable the metro to collect its own crime statistics.
“We cannot be proactive unless we have our own stats, that’s why those issues of cable theft in the same spot will be addressed through this system.
“When it’s on that system there should be a red light which tells members allocated to that specific region that you better be there 24/7,” said Meyer.
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