The newly appointed minister of police, Senzo Mchunu, has reportedly backed the City of Cape Town’s request to invest in ‘additional powers’ for metro police officers.
This also includes the ability to conduct criminal investigations.
In addition, Cape Town Mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis stated that he had a recent meeting with Mchunu that lasted two and a half hours, where they discussed the matter, as reported by News24.
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‘I explained to him the full history of our requests. He thought about it for a second and said, “I have no objection to that. Let’s get it done”,’ said Hill-Lewis.
Earlier this week, on Monday, Hill-Lewis spoke at a monthly Exporters Western Cape meeting, saying that the City’s lawyers met with South African Police Service (SAPS) lawyers ‘for the first time’ earlier that day to discuss the law change.
Hill-Lewis has argued that increasing the criminal investigation capacity within metropolitan law enforcement structures would help to lessen the ‘debilitating’ backlog of investigations within the SAPS.
While SAPS officials have a much broader mandate to enforce the law, metro police officers’ powers are ‘much more restricted’.
Metro officers are responsible for the enforcement of local bylaws and traffic infringements and play a vital role in visible policing initiatives.
‘What we mainly do in Cape Town is street-level patrolling. It’s called visible policing. Now that’s very helpful and good and it must be done, but what we would love to be able to do is to help with investigations,’ said Hill-Lewis.
Hill-Lewis claims that the backlog of criminal investigations is a ‘primary driver’ of the low prosecution rate in South Africa.
‘That’s where the criminal justice system actually falls over in South Africa. If you speak to an average dedicated detective they will tell you that they have around 350 cases on their desk,’ said Hill-Lewis.
‘They cannot possibly investigate them properly,’ he added.
Additionally, Hill-Lewis stated that he personally visited a police station, where detectives had ‘1 000 cases’ on their desks.
The push for metro police to have more power has been ongoing for years and has largely ‘fell on deaf ears’, according to Hill-Lewis.
‘We have been asking for a long time, for many years, “Can we have the investigative powers?” We will hire detectives, we will get cases moving in Cape Town. The answer has always been a very hard and belligerent no,’ said Hill-Lewis.
While Hill-Lewis stated that he had an ‘acrimonious relationship’ with former police minister Bheki Cele, he explained he was ‘on a much better footing’ with Mchunu.
After he wrote a long letter to every minister who took office in the new administration, Hill-Lewis met with Mchunu within 48 hours after he sent out the letter.
The letter detailed everything that the City of Cape Town wanted the ministers to deliver.
Kamogelo Mogotsi, spokesperson for the minister of police, confirmed that the meeting had occurred as well as follow-up work that was being done to establish the ‘terms of future collaboration’ between the different levels of government.
‘There was indeed a meeting, where the three spheres of government agreed to pool resources to fight crime. A technical team is preparing a working document on how the cooperation will work,’ said Mogotsi.
She added that Mchunu is also planning to meet officials from other regions of the country.
‘It was the first meeting to take place. We will be engaging with other provinces as per the ministry’s whole-of-government and whole-of-society approach,’ said Mogotsi.
Before the recent national elections, Parliament’s Portfolio Committee on Police published a report in April that recommended that the SAPS Act should be amended to ‘expand the power’ in order for metro police to conduct criminal investigations.
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Picture: @Senzo_Mchunu_ / X