Police Minister Bheki Cele calls for a year of action to address people’s complaints. He was delivering his Budget Vote Speech to the National Assembly on Tuesday.
Cele’s address comes at a time when South Africans are keenly awaiting the upcoming quarterly crime statistics. He has assured MPs that his government has heard the public’s grievances.
Cele says intelligence-led disruptive operations, tracking and tracing of wanted suspects, the removal of illegal firearms and intensifying policing over weekends, are all part of the Police’s nationwide armed intervention plan, called Operation Shanela.
Speaking on gender-based violence, he says the status of the historic DNA backlog at crime laboratories, has been reduced by 99%.
VIDEO: SABC’s Abra Barbier reports on Cele’s budget vote speech:
Spike in police killings
Cele says he remains concerned about attacks on police members. Opposition parties have also raised their concern about the spike in police killings.
The Democratic Alliance’s (DA) Andrew Whitfield says the increase in police killings is unacceptable. While the National Freedom Party (NFP) Shai Emam has decried the salaries of police officers.
Regarding police killings, Eman says he feels so sorry when he sees cops out, and wonders who is next.
Not all parties were sold on the backlog at the DNA labs being reduced, but Cele called on MPs who had evidence of any rape survivor whose case was being held up due to forensics, to pass that information on to the SAPS.
