CIT heists increase by more than 100%, inside jobs ‘proving problematic’ – Gauteng police

More than 2500 rapes and almost 600 sexual assault cases were reported. 

These are among the crime statistics presented by the provincial police commissioner Elias Mawela to the legislature’s Portfolio Committee on Community Safety. 

In his address on Thursday, Mawela told the committee that the province’s law enforcement had battled to meet some of the crime prevention targets. 

Truck hijackings increased by 31.8% while cash-in-transit heists saw a whooping increase of 106.7%. 

“CIT is a problem; it is a challenge. You may have all the strategies you can think of but once you have the insider threats, all your strategies will be in vain because the very same people who you are working with are the very same people who are colluding with the criminals,” said Mawela. 

“We do have instances whereby there is an insider threat and there are cases which are going through court processes, whereby some people within the industry have been arrested for planning or for also bring in the CIT’s. There are also some members of the service that were arrested, some were part of the robbery,” he added.   

Bank robberies remain at zero for the third consecutive year for quarter three. 

The last time bank robberies recorded between October and December were the three from 2017. 

Mawela said the men and women in blue were working around the clock to ensure lawlessness was brought to a minimum. 

Close to 6000 suspects were arrested for the various crimes. 

Mawela said the Covid-19 pandemic had a detrimental impact for policing during the period under review. 

“With members of all law enforcement agencies including the South African National Defence Force providing an essential service as frontline workers during the pandemic, the SAPS in Gauteng has not been spared.” 

The province has lost 82 officers since March last year, 4478 tested positive and 6 are currently in hospital. 

Several police stations were closed for decontamination.  

“During the period under review, 335 tested positive, 4 members passed away, 324 recovered and 13 were hospitalised,” he said. 

“As painful as it has been counting these numbers and lose dedicated members of the SAPS, we have soldiered on.” 

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