MEC casts dragnet for Gauteng's most wanted criminals

Gauteng's 1 600 most wanted criminals have been identified and are now being sought.

So says Gauteng MEC for Community Safety Firoz Cachalia in a reportback on his department's achievements.

"This is the first time we have a comprehensive list. Three months ago I instructed officers to sift through some 4 000 fingerprints lifted from crime scenes and to identify repeat offenders.

"We now have dockets open on all of them, and through the Gauteng Aggravated Robbery Strategy (GARS), combined teams of detectives and investigators will be hunting them with the support of special tracing teams," he said.

GARS started three months ago and is a multifaceted strategy involving identifying, tracing, arresting and effectively prosecuting as many perpetrators as possible. And closing the gap for perpetrators to operate in Gauteng, Cachalia said. It consists of:

• A crime-management centre which focuses on profiling networks of suspects, identifying repeat offenders and providing operational and technical support to the detectives attached to the dedicated tracing and investigation task teams.
  
  
• "Crack trio task teams" - all 130 police stations in the province have been grouped into 21 SAPS clusters. A dedicated crack trio task team has been established in each cluster to focus on gathering evidence on perpetrators of aggravated robberies to ensure they are traced, arrested and brought to justice. By the beginning of the month, 1 333 suspects had been arrested by these teams, and most have been linked to armed robberies.
  
  
• Multi-agency partnerships with private security companies focus on promoting partnerships and ensure co-operation between the SAPS and private security companies.
  
  
• Tackling stolen goods - this will be done through enhanced crime intelligence-gathering and analysis. The SAPS, Cachalia said, was endeavouring to identify the syndicates who buy and sell goods stolen from aggravated robberies. The objective, he said, was to arrest and prosecute those involved and to make it more difficult to sell stolen goods.
  
  
• Improving police reaction times - the 10111 centre was in the process of recruiting more staff and improving the skills of those employed at the centre.
  
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  Deployment of strategic roadblocks using regular and daily analysis of emerging aggravated-robbery hotspots.
  

Cachalia said the SAPS, in partnership with the Gauteng traffic police and metro police departments, was holding regular roadblocks.

In July alone, 10 suspected gang members operating in the south of Joburg were arrested by Gauteng traffic police at one of their roadblocks.

• Co-ordination with the criminal justice system to ensure there are significant improvements in successful prosecutions. Deputy Justice Minister Johnny de Lange, Cachalia said, had adopted this strategy as part of the criminal justice review currently being undertaken to improve the system.
  

Detectives were working closely with prosecutors and dockets would be scrutinised.

The strategy had already been successful in reducing the number of ATM bombings, Cachalia said.