South Coast detectives receive awards
Detectives were acknowledged for all their good work and successes.
The Saps Ugu Cluster detectives held their annual awards ceremony at the Mercury Children’s Home in Hibberdene last Friday.
It is at this event that the Ugu Cluster management and detectives from the various police stations and specialised units, reflect on the overall performance of the detectives over the previous year. Their strengths and weaknesses are analysed and best practices adopted while solutions are sought to overcome challenges that had been encountered.
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Apart from being an empowering exercise, where detectives learn from each other, especially from the more experienced among them, it is also a day of excitement as individual officers, stations and units receive recognition for their successes and achievements.
Ugu Cluster commander, Major General Sethenya Nxamagele, expressed her thanks and appreciation to all the detective commanders and their officers for their excellent investigation of criminal cases for the year.
Ugu Cluster was among the four best performing clusters in the province. The general encouraged the detectives to raise the bar and perform even better in the new year. She reminded them of what the acting provincial commissioner, Lieutenant General Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi, had said during a recent visit to the Ugu Cluster: that all the officers of the Saps had a duty to prevent and investigate crime regardless of whether they were from the Visible Policing Unit or the detective branch.
She urged officers not to work in isolation but as a team to ensure that everyone in the country was safe and felt safe. She thanked the detective commanders for their leadership and for steering their officers in the right direction.
Brigadier Bongani Sibiya, the deputy Ugu Cluster commander, represented the cluster in the general’s absence.
He delivered a brief motivational address and urged the detective commanders to acknowledge all the good work and successes of their members and not to only focus on their shortcomings, as they were the foot soldiers doing the groundwork and engaging with criminals out in the field.
Twenty-eight officers from the Family Violence, Child Protection and Sexual Offences unit (FCS), the Ugu Cluster Operational Command Centre (OCC) and the various police stations were presented with medals for securing life imprisonments in the cases they investigated. A special trophy, sponsored by Brigadier Sibiya and introduced for the first time this year, was awarded to the Harding Saps Detective Service for securing three life sentences, the highest by a police station within the cluster in 2018.
In the category ‘Highest Arrests’, Sawoti took first place, Msinsini was placed second and Dududu, third. In the category ‘Highest Conviction’, Port Edward was placed first, followed by St Faiths and third was Paddock. Umzinto took first position for ‘Data Integrity’ while Sawoti took second place and Msinsini, third.
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