Question NW492 to the Minister of Police
14 March 2016 - NW492
Waters, Mr M to ask the Minister of Police
(1)(a) How many sectors does the Sebenza Police Station have, (b) which suburbs fall within each sector, (c) what is the size of the population of the precinct, (d) how many visible police officers are there for each sector and (e) how many shifts are there for visible policing; (2) whether there are any minimum standards for visible policing with regard to the ratios of (a) visible policing to the population and (b) the number of sectors in relation to the population being serviced by any police station; if not, why not; if so, what are the relevant details in each case?
Reply:
(1) (a) Sebenza police station has two sectors.
(b) The following suburbs fall within the sectors:
- Sector 1: Chloorkop, Cresslawn, Esther Park, Kelvin Estates, Kempton Park West, Spartan.
- Sector 2: Croydon, Edenglen, Foundersview, Longmeadow, Modderfontein, Sebenza, Spartan Ext. 7.
(c) The population size of the policing area is 19 970.
(d) There are eight visible policing officers for each sector and one Sector Commander per sector.
(e) There are four shifts for visible policing.
(2) (a) The downward adjustment of the population since the promulgation of areas demarcated to Nokem Park and Edenvale Policing areas respectively affected the current allocation of posts to the Visible Policing environment.
The allocation/distribution of human resources is informed by a number of variables including the SAPS’s funded establishment, departmental priorities and human resource requirements of the different disciplines within the SAPS.
(b) Minimum standards for the number of sectors in relation to the population was not determined. The implementation of Sector Policing is prescribed in National Instruction 3/2013, which determines that a policing area must at least be divided into two sectors. All facets of visible policing, including crime prevention, attending to complaints as well as crime prevention operations are addressed as part of the operational deployment of members in the sectors in accordance with the Crime Pattern and Threat analysis. The main aim of Sector Policing as policing approach, is to facilitate community partcipation and mobilisation in support of preventing crime in the policing area in order to strehgthen the implementation of Community Policing.
The minimum standards utilised to calculate the human resource requirement in the visible policing environment, with specific reference to sector policing at police stations, utilises the following determinants which were taken into consideration to determine the number of theoretical personnel for crime prevention activities: reported crimes, population density, social and economic factors, contingency allowances and environmental factors.
Therefore, to build the methodology on population only can never be utilised because it ignores the basic principles of organisational design/strategy.