- The newly elected Strand Community Policing Forum (CPF) aims to reduce crime by working closely with police and assisting residents with investigations.
- CPF Chair Simphiwe Mqulwana urges the community to stop shielding criminals, emphasising that crime is often committed by familiar faces within the community.
- The CPF is advocating for a new police station, citing a lack of resources, minimal police presence, and insufficient patrol vehicles.
The newly elected Strand Community Policing Forum (CPF) committee has vowed to work closely with the police to root out crime in the neighbourhood.
The CPF was elected on Saturday 25 January in a special event at Lwandle High School.
Newly elected chair Simphiwe Mqulwana described their mandate as to alleviate crime in the area. “Our priority is to prevent crime in the community. It is to ensure that we are living in a peaceful and crime-free community. Most importantly, it is to assist the community in dealing with their problems concerning the officers, things such as doing follow-ups or engaging with the detectives to speed up the investigations,” he said.
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Building trust between police and the community is also on their agenda.
Mqulwana urged the community to be responsible for the area and work with the officers, adding that some criminals are known in society.
“The people who are committing crime in our society are our brothers, uncles, mothers and sisters. There is no way that something can happen here and there is no one who has seen anything. The community must stop protecting the criminals,” said Mqulwana.
He described Strand as one of the busiest communities in the metro with murder, gender-based violence (GBV) and house break-ins as some of the common cases.
Mqulwana said part of their mission is to push the agenda of the construction of the new police station in the area.
He said lack of resources in the station has given the criminals an upper hand.
“We need the government to build a fully-fledged police station. Our satellite police station doesn’t have enough resources to tackle crime in the area.
“We don’t have enough police vans and the number of officers deployed in the station is minimal,” he stated, adding that building the station is one of their priorities. He said they will ensure that they will revive all the community safety structures.