Faizel Patel – 24/08/2021
Crime and police expert Dr Chris de Kock says the latest crime stats shows that one of the biggest problems is leadership and that crime intelligence must be scrutinized to avoid it becoming politicized.
De Kock was speaking to Radio Islam about the level of crime in the country.
Police Minister Behki Cele released the crime stats for the first quarter of the 2021/2022 financial year on Friday which paints a grim picture of crime in the country.
De Kock says there must be a hard look at the police leadership and crime intelligence.
“It will be necessary to depoliticize and de-factionalize crime intelligence. The problem started when General Mdluli was appointed as the head of crime intelligence. Since than, you’ll find more and more factionists within crime intelligence and that seriously hampered the work of crime intelligence.”
De Kock says there has been a dramatic increase in violent crimes.
“Of the violent crime, there’s constant increases if you compare this year with the year before last year which was a more normal year. If you look at that comparison, murder which is the most reliable crime trend is up with 6.7%.”
De Kock says he hopes President Cyril Ramaphosa will deal with corruption.
“The only hope that I have is that our president will now start to deal with corruption, people who don’t want to be kept accountable, people who have their own political agendas all over in government but especially in the police and in the intelligence services that something will be done.”
De Kock says the chairperson of the portfolio committee on police reporting Saps to the Speaker of Parliament because it took police three months to answer the committee’s questions shows a lack of capacity and blatant disregard.
Listen to the interview with Dr Chris de Kock
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