The changing face of SA's police
9 July 2007The growth of the South African Police Service (SAPS) from its current 164 000 officers to 192 000 by 2010 is being accompanied by significant changes in police training - and a fundamental departure from the top-heavy, centralised police structure of the past.
Speaking in Cape Town last week after the release of the SAPS's crime statistics for 2006/07, Safety and Security Minister Charles Nqakula described SAPS's moves to decentralise their operations in order to improve service and response times at local station level.
Nqakula said experienced operational managers from 43 area, provincial and national offices had been redeployed to local police stations both to boost their numbers and to improve their administrative ability. In all, he said, some 15 000 experienced policemen and women had been deployed around the country.
While the full effects of the restructuring programme, launched in August 2006, had yet to be felt, and its effectiveness had yet to be measured, Nqakula said there were already "indications of the wisdom of pushing more resources to the station level and empowering that level to prevent and combat crime".
New technology
In addition, a computerised performance measurement system had been introduced to assess and evaluate police performance.
Nqakula said police use of technology would reach another milestone in October, when Gauteng province launches a radio communications network featuring an automated vehicle tracking system that will indicate in real time how many police vehicles are on the road, and where exactly they are.
This will allow call centre operators to send the nearest available police vehicles by the quickest routes to crime or emergency scenes. The Eastern Cape and KwaZulu-Natal provinces are next in line for the system.
Boosting police numbers
Also speaking after the release of
the latest crime statistics last week, Deputy National Police Commissioner Mala Singh said that 55 000 new police officers had been recruited over the last five years, swelling the ranks of the SAPS to 164 000.
Singh said this would increase by a further 28 000 policemen and women, to 192 000 in total, by 2010.
Bolstering the work of the permanent SAPS staff are police reservists, 35 000 of whom had were signed up between April 2006 and March 2007 alone. By 2009, says Deputy National Police Commissioner Andre Pruis, South Africa's reservists should number in the region of 100 000.
Pruis adds that the SAPS is continuously updating its recruiting selection procedures, working on the retention of current staff, and enhancing police training programmes.
Changes in training
According to Pruis, new recruits now go through 12 months' intensive training before being enlisted into the police service, and
are subject to a further 12 months' probation thereafter.
According to the SAPS, police training combines academic study at 11 SAPS training institutes across the country with field training, supplemented by various specialised in-service courses.
To produce better detectives, the SAPS has more than doubled the academic programme at its two detective academies, at Hammanskraal in Gauteng province and Paarl in the Western Cape, from six to 14 weeks.
Detectives are trained in a variety of courses, ranging from counter-terrorism to commercial crime, organised crime, family violence, child protection, sexual offences, and serious and violent crime.
SouthAfrica.info reporter
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