Police Minister, General Bheki Cele and Deputy Minister Cassel Mathale on Monday 07 June 2021, hosted a meeting between community leaders of Olievenhoudtbosch and top officials from the South African Police Service.
This meeting comes a week after a Ministerial Imbizo was hosted in the area, which unearthed a series of policing shortcomings, especially concerning claims of poor service residents receive from the local police station.
The Gauteng MEC of Community Safety Faith Mazibuko also formed part of the meeting that saw a full delegation of SAPS senior officials led by National Commissioner General Khehla Sitole address the plight of community members, as well as put in place a plan to deal with the challenges faced by the local police station.
The delegation announced that a clean-up campaign will take place, starting with the overhauling of the management of the police station, a new station commander will be deployed to the area in July.
Extending the building of the police station to accommodate more officers to serve the growing population will be urgently looked into. In the meantime, a medium term solution to the stations resourcing shortcomings will be addressed over the coming weeks, with the injection of new patrol vehicles to compliment the existing fleet.
A team of detectives has been assembled to investigate the hundreds of cold cases. Currently Olievenhoutbosch has over 1800 undetected cases. The team of investigators will track and trace suspects, wanted for various crimes including murder, rape and robbery.
The Department of Community Safety has committed to reviving the local Community Police Forum (CPF) to facilitate community-police relations in the area as well as build street committees that are fully functional.
Police Minister, General Bheki Cele says all these interventions are necessary if the SAPS wants to win back the trust of the community.
“The stations performance will be monitored at national level through the inspectorate and regular reports will be issued to the police management to monitor its progress. I am appealing to the community to work with us in cleaning up this policing area, I urge residents to report corrupt police, at the same time I call on community members to give support to the many good honest and hardworking officers of the law.” – Cele. Concluded.
The Police Ministry urges all communities to report police wrongdoing to the Independent Police Investigative Directorate (IPID)
Source: South African Police Service
