Enough is enough.
This is the sentiment of the community of Heidedal about the “extremely poor service delivery” of the police at the Heidedal Police Station.
Sophia Swartz of the Heidedal Civic Association says this organisation and community members are marching to the Heidedal Police Station on Sunday at 14:00 to air their grievances.
A community meeting was held on Monday, 9 October, and around 30 community associations were represented, deciding to gather to march and hand over a memorandum to Maj. Gen. Arthur Adams, district commisioner of Mangaung.
Swartz said some of the reasons for the march is the poor relationship between the community and the police, the language barrier, and incompetence of police officers who cannot even take down a statement or write an affidavit.
“Community members experience extremely poor service with only two vans and four officers in the charge office – sometimes only two,” she says.
The grievance of the community follows a question by George Michalakis, DA member of the National Council of Provinces, to the minister of police, Bheki Cele, about the average response times of police stations in the Free State.
According to the answer, the average responce time for the Heidedal Police Station for a complaint in progress, where a crime is being committed, is 29 minutes and 19 seconds.
Michalakis says in many instances the police take much longer and sometimes do not show up at all. This is also echoed by members of the community.
This is not the only police station suffering a serious lack in response time.
The Parkweg Police Station, the biggest police station in the Free State, rated an average response time of 39 minutes and 38 seconds for 10111 calls, and 34 minutes, 8 seconds for direct calls.
The average call time for the Bloemspruit Police Station is a staggering 66 minutes and 37 seconds.
“This is a clear, practical example of how the lack of police resources such as visible policing and vehicles affects the safety of the public. In a life-threatening emergency, no one has the luxury to wait for the police to eventually react,” Michalakis says.
Jan van Niekerk, the FF Plus’ provincial leader in the Free State, says there are now 638 unused police vehicles in the Free State – vehicles that are urgently needed to fight crime.
This is in response to a question of the FF Plus in the Free State Legislator to the MEC for community safety, roads and transport, Maqueen Mathae. She said of the 3 616 police vehicles in the Free State, they will have to get rid of 472 due to them reaching the end-of-life stage.
“In the Free State where farm attacks and stock theft is a risk for safety, we cannot have unusable police vehicles,” Van Niekerk said in a news release.
Swartz said the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), DA, Patriotic Alliance (PA) and SA Action are some of the political parties that indicated that they will join the march on Sunday, although the march is organised by community members.
The march will start on the island behind the Heidedal Police Station.
