City demands action as mayor urges national government to unlock expanded policing powers to tackle gang, gun and drug crime in Cape Town. Cape Town Mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis has intensified calls for national government to immediately grant expanded policing powers to the City’s metro police, saying further delays are no longer defensible amid escalating gang, gun and drug violence. Hill-Lewis was responding to public remarks by Acting Police Minister Firoz Cachalia, who this week acknowledged that the South African Police Service (SAPS) is currently not able to defeat gangs driving violent crime in the Western Cape.
“Minister Cachalia openly admits that SAPS do not have the resources to win the fight against gang crime. It is now impossible for him to delay any further in responding to Cape Town’s proposal for City metro police to help SAPS investigate gun, gang and drug crimes,” Hill-Lewis said. He said the City has already drafted the necessary regulations to expand municipal policing powers, but they have yet to be signed off by the minister.
According to the mayor, City officers are ready to build prosecution-ready case dockets to help drive convictions in gang, firearm and narcotics cases. Hill-Lewis said City police already seize more than 450 illegal firearms a year, but only about 5% of these cases result in convictions, which he attributed to an under-resourced criminal justice system, including SAPS and the National Prosecuting Authority. “The Acting Police Minister has the power to change this situation immediately — by urgently resourcing SAPS and by expanding the draft municipal policing regulations his department published for public comment as far back as June last year,” he said, adding that he has requested an urgent meeting with Cachalia to unblock the process.
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