Planning for crime prevention: The case of the city of Tshwane

Chapter 5

Crime prevention initiatives and activities

In an effort to provide an overview of the way in which the City of Tshwane's Crime Prevention Strategy is implemented, without negating the efforts and initiatives of other role players in urban crime prevention, the following section has been structured as follows: Firstly, it outlines the intended and unintended outcomes caused by implementation of the Crime Prevention Strategy by the Tshwane Municipality up to date. Secondly, it outlines city-wide initiatives mainly by the SAPS, and thirdly, it provides an indication of local crime prevention initiatives.

Implementation of the Crime Prevention strategy: Intended and unintended outcomes

As the City of Tshwane Crime Prevention Strategy is a five-year strategy that has only been in operation since August 2002, not much has happened in terms of its implementation. According to the Crime Prevention Unit and the Head of the Regional Offices of the Metropolitan Police Department they are definitely making an impact and regard themselves as highly successful,¹ especially in creating awareness regarding crime prevention and changing perceptions about crime prevention in general and the Metropolitan Police Department in particular. Even though it is too early to measure performance, the main targets for now have been met, namely:
- to set up a process for the development of a Crime Prevention Strategy
- to put procedures and mechanisms in place to conduct policing activities and to capture data
- to conduct training for the members of the Metropolitan Police Department
While this is commendable, it took almost a year to formalise working agreements and mechanisms to monitor the processes and to provide information and statistics.

As for problems, one of the major stumbling blocks has been identified as limited resources. Even though crime prevention was rated as the third highest priority in the recent IDP process, it obviously does not guarantee a proportionally bigger budget in the next financial year. Crime prevention entails numerous activities that can't be planned for in advance, for example the 'Right Wing Threat' at the end of 2002, and unscheduled sport or other events which imply security risks and requires deployment of resources.² This can create havoc with budgets. In terms of funding for implementation of projects in the next financial year, the City of Tshwane Municipality only went through an exercise to determine priority projects for funding at the end of 2002 in order to determine which of the priority projects could be implemented.

The implementation of any crime 'prevention' strategy is also extremely difficult to monitor, as measuring ³ can lead to misperceptions of the actual state of affairs. If success is, for instance, measured empirically and social crime prevention was effective, reports of for example child abuse will have risen as more such cases have been reported. Even though outcomes were identified in the Tshwane Crime Prevention Strategy, the supporting projects and proposed activities were not set out in enough detail to develop targets and to be monitored. This should be addressed in the refinement of the strategy.

Although the approach to the strategy is explicitly stated as an 'holistic and integrated approach' to crime prevention, the absence of any mention of or integration within the broader City of Tshwane's municipality, and the omission of any indication to other departments, clearly illustrates that there has up to now been no attempt at integrating and centre staging crime prevention within the local governance arena. Departments and units that could support social crime prevention are those that are responsible for example local economic development, housing, environmental design, planning and land use management units. Furthermore, the strategy does not make a single reference to the Tshwane IDP (2002) and seems to attempt integration through the creation of yet another 'integrated' forum and parallel planning process. This attempt at addressing crime prevention in a holistic way is questionable whilst duplication of existing local government functions within the organisational structure of the Crime Prevention Unit takes place, especially as the 'affected' departments in council seem not to even be aware of the unit's existence, intentions and activities.

As crime prevention is a new function for the municipality, the Crime Prevention Strategy placed major emphasis on the establishment of procedures, the strategy development process and the transformation processes, and less so on the implementation of specific crime prevention initiatives and activities.
1. Operationalise organisational and functional structures, systems and processes
  
  According to the Metropolitan Police,⁴ the major implementation milestones thus far have
  been:
  - Successful transformation from the previous 'Safety and Security Department' to a fullyfledged Metropolitan Police Department. The involvement of most of the middle managers in the processes seemed to ensure that staff took ownership from the start.⁵
  - Establishment of a city-wide and representative 'City of Tshwane Crime Prevention Forum' as a co-ordinating body for crime prevention in the city. In this instance the initiative and support of the Mayor and the commitment of the various role players were regarded as critical success factors.⁶
  - Development of a holistic approach to crime prevention and the finalisation of the City of Tshwane Crime Prevention Strategy 2002-2007.⁷ The critical success factor in this regard is the fact that a separate Crime Prevention Unit was established to spearhead the development of the policy and strategy, and to address social crime prevention and environmental design aspects.
  - The retraining and sensitising of members of the former Safety and Security Department within the Metropolitan Police Department.⁸ The new role for former traffic and security officers is regarded as a mere extension of previous tasks, but as something that could improve the image of the Metropolitan Police Department. However, the transformation processes that are still underway in the municipality imply that only senior management are permanent employees as yet and that no salary adjustments for individuals (former security and traffic officers) have been effected to match the higher status and extended responsibility of being Metropolitan Police Officers. This state of affairs is said to be having devastating effects on the moral of employees and to make it very difficult to keep officers motivated.
2. Social crime prevention
  
  The major obstacle in this regard is for the community and the members of the Metropolitan Police Department to take ownership of the strategy and to become comfortable with their new role.⁹ The personnel of the Metropolitan Police service (former traffic and security officers) have indicated a strong buy-in to this role and have embarked on extensive training and reskilling programs to be capacitated and sensitised for it, as well as for the integrated approach to crime prevention on which Tshwane has embarked.
  
  The Social Crime Prevention Unit has identified the community's mistrust of the police and misperceptions of the metropolitan police as a critical problem. It seems that people can as yet not distinguish between the Metropolitan Police and SAPS. In order to address this, the Metropolitan Police has, through the Social Crime Prevention Unit, embarked on an awareness campaign in the local community. According to them they try to 'walk the extra mile' in order to win the trust of members of the public.¹⁰ The constructive, visible role of the various community forums is also critical in this regard.
  
  Even though not mentioned by the Crime Prevention Unit and in the Crime Prevention Strategy, 2002, as such, a large number of poverty alleviation and education activities and projects were identified in the 2002 Tshwane IDP that are aimed specifically at addressing the root causes for crime, ie poverty alleviation and education-related projects.
3. Crime prevention through policing
  
  The establishment of formal and informal working relations and partnerships between the various role players in crime prevention is critical. Good relations between the SAPS and the Metropolitan Police Department, and between the Metropolitan Police Department and the various community forums and other local role players, contributed towards joint initiatives, the sharing of resources, and improved effectiveness of the Metropolitan Police Department.¹¹
  
  In terms of implementation and impacting on crime prevention itself, the success stories cited mostly relate to proactive policing and joint operations between the Metropolitan Police, SAPS and other role players. The major successes have been achieved by increasing police visibility through roving roadblocks, 'Bobby on the Beat' and stop and search activities,¹² - see Box 4. An example of this is how the concerted effort at ensuring increased visibility has resulted in the crime being reduced in the Inner City in such a manner that it got rid of its number one position (which it held for a couple of years) as the area with the most reported crimes in Tshwane.
  
  The Metropolitan Police Service is responsible for event management¹³ and policing on certain dates and areas, such as all the properties of the City Council. In these cases the SAPS are only on stand-by.
  
  Box 4: Successful Metropolitan Policing Activities
  
  Major 'stop and search' clampdowns where the Metropolitan Police and SAPS moved into an area for an hour, barricaded off a whole precinct with more than 400 policemen and women and stopped and searched everybody in the area. This was done in the precincts of Sunnyside and Brooklyn within the course of one evening, with major success rates in terms of arrests of suspicious persons, uncovering of illegal firearms and drugs and promoting the image of the Metropolitan Police Department, and regular roving roadblocks throughout the city, where the roadblock is set up and relocated every hour.
4. Crime prevention through environmental design
  
  With regards to environmental design within the Crime Prevention Unit, little has happened in terms of implementation, mostly due to a lack of capacity and a need to fill vacant posts. However, if crime prevention through environmental design is considered outside the ambit of the Crime Prevention Unit, it becomes evident that the Town Planning and Urban Design Sections in the Tshwane Metropolitan Municipality have always regarded 'crime prevention through environmental design' as a key component of their responsibility.¹⁴ However, officials in this department were not even aware that a Crime Prevention Unit exists or that it encapsulates an environmental design component. The existing functions and capacities were not taken into account in the Crime Prevention Strategy. Officials from the Crime Prevention Unit indicated that in their mind, the only way to ensure that crime prevention receives priority attention is to take full responsibility for all its facets and not to leave it to the responsibility of other departments where it will not be considered a key task.¹⁵ In the case of the Metropolitan Municipality of Tshwane the Town Planning Unit was, and still is, not regarded as a major role player. It was for instance not consulted directly in the development of the Crime Prevention Strategy and the establishment of the Environmental Design Unit.¹⁶
Joint city-wide crime prevention operations

The SAPS Area Commissioner for Tshwane receives daily updates of crime statistics from all the local police stations, which is then compiled on a city-wide level and used by the SAPS Area Superintendent to plan crime prevention operations in co-operation with the relevant local SAPS station, the Metropolitan Police Department, and the relevant Operational Region, the SANDF and its commandos, the SAAF, various units from the SAPS (ie Equestrian Unit, Dog Unit, Air Unit, Vehicle Theft Recovery Unit, Crowd Management Unit), the national Department of Home Affairs, and other relevant role players such as Metro Rail and the Town Planners at the City of Tshwane Municipality.
Strategically planned joint operations

The critical aspect is to use the information and experience for planning,¹⁷ but not to confuse statistics with realities and not to develop a reactive approach. Of key importance in this regard is to establish trends and patterns and to understand the implications of these figures. Trends specifically relate to crimes associated with certain times, eg holidays, the type of crimes related to specific geographical areas, as well as the geographical origin (home-bases) of suspects for certain types of crimes. Recent trends for example indicate that not only are lower income areas in the City of Tshwane the areas subject to the highest percentages of violent crimes such as murder and assault, but they have also recently become the areas with the highest percentage of property crimes such as robberies, hijacking and theft.¹⁸

Crime prevention operations are planned, based on national directives and priorities, as well as area priorities. Currently the national and city-wide priority area is 'violent crime' (ie armed robbery, rape, assault and hijacking). Victims and targets that are currently receiving priority are women and children, firearms and vehicles. The operations are usually planned to take into account the bigger picture of crime in the city, the victims and targets, as well as the probable groups of offenders.¹⁹ Most of these operations are area-based (see the Mamelodi example - Box 5). In some instances they are also target-based (see the Metro Rail example - Box 6) or linked to specific events, if it is a national or international event, otherwise the local station will take the responsibility.

Crime prevention operations are planned to be:²⁰
- Proactive: in terms of promoting the image of the SAPS and in raising awareness, and not so much on physical successes
- Reactive: such as searching of individuals and places ie hostels to locate and arrest suspects.
Coordination of activities and resources

In order to get authorisation for operations, a formal application is lodged with the SAPS Area Commissioner, as well as through the various joint operational committees (JOCOMs) at city and provincial level.²¹ These operations require of each role player to handle its own resources and costs, and thus require the co-ordination of budgets. Difficulties that arise with this approach are that budgets, as well as the costs of utilising resources, differ. Tshwane Metropolitan Police and the Department of Home Affairs for example have limited budgets for overtime and the Air Force for flight hours. The SADF Commandos, on the other hand, have resources in terms of recruits that are paid whether utilised or not. Crime prevention activities have been prioritised in order to effectively utilise this situation,²² and even though the recruits are regarded by SAPS as 'more cost-effective than efficient', they are deployed with successin crime prevention operations.

The success of the operation is monitored to determine whether it has had an impact on:²³
- Reporting of crime at, and experience of, local SAPS stations
- Surrounding areas or foreseen targets, ie whether train-stop operations and arrests in the morning have had an effect on crime reported in the Inner City during the day
- Feedback from the local CPFs and politicians
- An inventory of what was found, confiscated, etc.
One of the major stumbling blocks in city-wide and provincial planning is the difficulty in providing a service in informal areas where there are no street names and/or house numbers.²⁴ The planning for these areas is based on information derived from aerial photos requested from the SAAF. The information on statistics is placed and modelled on a geographic information system (GIS) for ease of use and record keeping. The SAPS is also working with the Town Planners at the City of Tshwane's Municipality on a project where they want to use ' territoriality' to demarcate areas and 'create' a unique image in each of these areas.

The only private security company that works in close collaboration with the SAPS in terms of sharing information and resources on this level is NETSTAR, a vehicle tracking service.²⁵ This serves as an example of co-operation that benefits both parties to improve cost-effectiveness and recovery rates in operations.
Local/Neigbourhood crime prevention initiatives

Each station commissioner and the respective CPF are responsible for crime prevention at a local level.²⁶ The SAPS tries to encourage the CPFs to get involved with the Police Reserves. It needs to be noted that each area has different priorities. The largest responsibility for local area policing and the challenge to deal with community policing issues²⁷ lie with the local SAPS stations. This includes the reporting of crimes, investigations, ensuring increased visibility of policing at neighbourhood level, as well the establishment of local partnerships and the promotion of resource and information sharing.

Various examples²⁸ exist where community organisations have contributed towards crime prevention in local areas and on city-wide level by for example donating bicycles to the Metropolitan Police, leasing additional cars for use by the SAPS, and sharing information on crimes with the police. In the Inner City, Brooklyn, and Arcadia, this co-operation also includes the provision of CCTV cameras by the Section 21-Company, supported by the City Improvement Districts and Business Against Crime.

Other initiatives, which have recently received publicity, are that of gated communities and street closures where local communities embarked on crime prevention through private ' environmental design' and policing. These private initiatives provide some difficulty for local area policing²⁹ and in many cases are themselves not in line with relevant by-laws and legislation. A significant amount of research has also been done in this regard and the City of Tshwane also had a process of public hearings and is busy developing a policy in this regard.³⁰

Box 5: Typical joint crime prevention operation:

Example crime prevention operation in Mamelodi, March 2003 ³¹

Mamelodi, a former township area and now eastern suburb of Tshwane, has been identified as the target for the specific operation. Crime statistics indicated that for a number of weeks Mamelodi had surpassed all Tshwane's higher income areas as the area experiencing the highest number of hijacks, armed robbery, rape and assault in the city. It has also been identified as an area from which numerous offenders operate.

A joint initiative was set up to attend to this situation. It was initiated and co-ordinated by the SAPS Area Operational Co-ordinator, through the Joint Operations Committee (JOCOM) that sits once a week as a forum to enable co-operation between the SAPS and its various specialised units eg the Police Air Task Force, the SAAF, Department of Home Affairs, and the Metropolitan Police. A provincial JOCOM meeting sits once a month where the respective areas do joint planning for the month and bargain for the distribution of resources.

The crime prevention operation typically tries to:
- Achieve high visibility of police activity
- Establish a sense of safety for the broader community and enhance the image of the police forces and crime prevention activities
- Keep an element of surprise and high success rates in the identification and confiscation of stolen goods and vehicles, illegal firearms, drugs, and illegal immigrants
- Strengthening the image and hands of the local police station personnel.
Such a joint operation usually has specific components, ie:
- The creation of teams of people from the respective role players in the process, utilising specialised skills such as vehicle identification, enforcement of by-laws, and identification and the handling of illegal immigrants.
- 'flying roadblocks' - geographically spread in a certain radius to avoid the mere displacement of targeted offenders and offences. These roadblocks move to 20 odd locations every 15 minutes. The teams are picked up and dropped off by helicopter, of which the flight path is designed to continuously cross the targeted area in order to improve visibility.
- Air to ground operations - where specific areas, ie inter-modal public transport nodes and hostels in this case are targeted, cordoned and people 'stopped and searched', with the helicopter landing within the targeted area. This is especially done at primary schools and places of high visibility to simultaneously improve the image of the police (Apparently only hovering Orex helicopters with a 'show' of armed SADF members jumping out from about 2 meters above ground impress teenagers and are reserved for landing at high schools).
- Fixed roadblocks at all major roads to and from the area.
Box 6: Typical joint crime prevention operation:

Example crime prevention operation on Metro Rail ³²

An example of exceptional good co-operation is that between the SAPS, Metro Rail, and their security guards. A joint operation is done almost on a weekly basis on the request of Metro Rail, where about 80 Metro Rail security guards and 150 SAPS and SADF members are involved. The operation is called 'Train-Stop' and implies that the train is stopped between stations and each person on board is searched. The 'Train-Stop' operation is supported by undercover policemen on the train, and policemen and horses from the Equestrian Unit that patrol the railway line.

Foot Notes

Ahomed, Burkenstock; Van Deventer.
Van Deventer.
Ahomed, Burkenstock.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ahomed, Burkenstock; Van Deventer; Malope.
Ibid.
Ahomed, Burkenstock; Malope.
Ahomed, Burkenstock.
Ahomed, Burkenstock; Van Deventer.
Van Deventer.
Ahomed, Burkenstock; Malope; Van Deventer.
Van Rhyn.
Barbir.
Ahomed, Burkenstock.
This fragmented and discipline-bound attempt at a so-called holistic approach to crime prevention seems to reflect the different contexts from which place-based crime prevention originated, ie environmental criminology, situational crime prevention, crime prevention through environmental design and defensible space (see Schneider RH, Kitchen T. Planning for Crime Prevention. A Transatlantic Perspective. New York: Routledge, 2002: 91-118).
See Evans, Fyfe, Herbert (1992) for discussions on the role of information, structure, themes etc in
locally sensitive policing and crime prevention and the importance of community-policing agency relations in this regard. Evans DJ, Fyfe NR, Herbert DT. (eds). Crime, Policing and Place. Essays in environmental criminology. London: Routledge, 1992. Planning for crime prevention: the case of the City of Tshwane 36
Van Rhyn. Also see Schönteich & Louw 1-20.
See Eck & Weisburd (1995) for discussions on the relation between crime and place. Eck JE, Weisburd D. (eds). 'Crime and Place'. Crime Prevention Studies 4. Washington DC: Criminal Justice Press, New York and Police Executive Research Forum, 1995.
Van Rhyn.
Van Deventer; van Rhyn.
Van Rhyn.
Ibid.
Van Rhyn.
van Rhyn; Van Deventer.
Ibid.
See Pelser E. The Challenges of Community Policing. Occasional Paper No 42. Institute for Security Studies. September 1999: 1-15. http://www.iss.org.za/Pubs/Papers20030309.
Van Deventer; Van Rhyn.
Van Deventer; Barbir.
Interview: Landman K. CSIR, Boutek (Environmental Design and Crime Prevention). 12 October 2002, Pretoria.
Schoonraad MDS. University of Pretoria. Discussions during March-April 2003.
Van Rhyn.
Ibid.

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