The Kempton Park Police station is severely under resourced resulting in a lack of police visibility. This became evident following a Democratic Alliance (DA)-led oversight to the station.
Note to Editors: Please find an English soundbite by Michael Waters MPL here
Currently, there are six sectors within the Kempton Park precinct which ought to have two vehicles patrolling 24 hours a day.
Due to the lack of vehicles, the current reality on the ground is that there are only three sector vehicles which must patrol two sectors. In addition, these vehicles are used for responding to complaints where anything between 30 – 40 are received in any 12-hour shift.
It is no wonder residents complain that they never see police vehicles patrolling their streets while crimes like cable theft are on the rise – there is no deterrent.
The detective branch has 54 detectives and 12 crime officers, who share 26 vehicles and carry a total case load of 6744 cases.
That is an average case load of 102 per detective. It is unrealistic to expect any person to investigate such a huge amount of cases
The only way policing works on a local level, is if local circumstances are taken into consideration, and when adequate distribution of resources take place. Neither of these things have happened at the Kempton Park police station.
The DA will be taking Kempton Park police station’s fight to the Gauteng Provincial Legislature – the station and the community should be well resourced.