Cape Town - The City of Cape Town’s Safety and Security Directorate has deployed 100 Law Enforcement officers to the CBD.
Mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis and Safety and Security Mayco JP Smith welcomed the unit on the streets of the CBD at the City’s metro police offices on Wednesday.
The officers, who are recent graduates, will be joining the 18 officers servicing the CBD before the unit’s deployment to provide 24-hour policing services in the City Bowl.
Speaking at the event, Hill-Lewis said the CBD was the heartbeat of the city’s economy, which carries thousands of residents, workers and tourists every day and should be protected as such.
He said: “We want the CBD to be a place where everyone can feel safe walking to and from the bus stop or the train station, and where women feel safe visiting restaurants and bars at night.
“The rise in petty and violent crime in the CBD has left people vulnerable. That is why we decided to budget for an unprecedented deployment of officers to the CBD alone.”
Smith said alongside the deployment of the 100-strong unit, the City also launched a pilot project designed to enhance the co-ordination and use of technology and resources between its three enforcement services.
Smith said: “In an ever-changing world, the combination of a physical policing presence and force multipliers like improved technology and full exploitation of the data and analyses that come with that technology becomes critical.
“We have established a temporary fusion centre, using our emergency policing incident command platform to enhance efforts on the ground, and will use the lessons from this pilot to replicate the project city-wide in the future.”
Councillor Ian McMahon said: “With the current negative socio-economic environment we have seen a spike in crime in the CBD, however, our SAPS station Commander is working hand-in hand with the City.
“Hopefully, this solution will continue to bring down the crime stats, specifically in the area of the night-time economy where we saw a lot of the crime, and in the area of tourism.”
While some residents, businesses and organisations welcomed the City’s intervention, Stop CoCT founder Sandra Dickson accused the City of not consulting with the general public before allocating resources to the CBD.
Dickson said: “The City spending such an amount of resources in a single and small area makes one wonder why the other CBDs are left without similar resources and to fend for themselves. Is the City implementing a grossly asymmetrical solution to a favoured area?”