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The City of Cape Town is planning on spending about R860 million over three years on technology and equipment to fight violent crimes.

But community policing forum (CPF) members and residents on the Cape Flats are highly sceptical, saying this could land up being a waste of money as violent crimes continue anyway.

News24 reported how the city is aiming to make use of gunshot detection technology and drones to locate gun violence and dangerous crime flare-ups more effectively, mobilising to rapidly deploy policing resources to crime-ridden areas on the Cape Flats.

While acoustic gunshot detection systems went live in Hanover Park in December, in Manenberg in February, and in Lavender Hill in March, JP Smith, the mayoral committee member for safety and security, said the tech would be rolled out across more areas soon.

“The City is investing around R860 million over the next three years in technology to make Cape Town safer: From CCTV to drones, dashcams, aerial surveillance, acoustic gunshot detection, and the master digital system to coordinate it all in real-time,” Smith said in a statement.

Previously, violence flare-ups would only become known to SAPS once the body count began rising. However, now the City [can] gain strategic information in realtime to share with police, enabling authorities to concentrate resources into stabilising an area [much] faster.

Gunshot detection technology – once known as ShotSpotter and now known as SoundThinking – identifies the sound of gunfire, allowing law enforcement authorities to pinpoint territorial battles erupting between rival gangs immediately.

“Gunshots can be pinpointed by street, block, and time of day, generating heat maps and measurable data on gun violence trends over time,” Smith added.

He said that the introduction of this tech led to a “significant reduction” in crime in Hanover Park and Manenberg already. However, Hanover Park CPF chair Kashiefa Mohammed said crime had increased drastically since December despite all these new technologies being supposedly put in place:

Mohammed said killings continued unabated with a 33-year-old man being shot dead in Surburg Walk on Saturday, while a 23-year-old man was shot and wounded, in what was also believed to be gang-related violence.

Mohammed said that at the end of the day, this tech does very little to help fight the prevalent crime:

“Where are these drones the City speaks of when children are being murdered in broad daylight? Where are the ShotSpotters when gunshots are ringing out at 02:00 in the morning? Where are the drones when parents are running down the stairs of their flats to collect their loved one’s body … who was caught in crossfire?

He is adamant that the city is wasting its money on all this expensive tech.

Lavender Hill CPF chair Gavin Walbrugh is more hopeful:

 “We definitely welcome this initiative by the City, and we hope it will work.

“We don’t want to be negative about this, but some of these technologies have been used in other parts of the Cape Flats areas, but yet we are still seeing dead bodies every week and increases in gang violence,” said Walbrugh.

Meanwhile, a Cape Flats resident mocked the new tech-driven interventions saying “It’s a bloody joke, to be honest,” while another resident Lucinda Damons said that the gangs would just be motivated to outsmart SAPS and that it won’t do anything to keep crime at bay.

Sounds like an excuse for the boys to play with their toys.

[source:news24]