Police stations do Bay proud

TWO Nelson Mandela Bay police stations have been rated as the best-performing cop shops in the Eastern Cape. They were honoured at a police Service Excellence Awards ceremony held in East London on Friday.

Humewood police station, which covers the beachfront, hotels and the Port Elizabeth Airport, was named as the top performer out of all large police stations in the province.

KwaNobuhle police station was ranked best performer among the medium-sized stations, and Kareedouw came out tops in the smaller stations category.

Humewood police station commander Brigadier Ronald Koll said yesterday his team had managed to reduce serious crime in his area, which included Summerstrand, Humewood and Central.

Several aspects, including a station's performance, are considered for the award. Various criteria have to be met, such as the reduction of serious crime, the solving of crimes by detectives, the number of arrests in serious cases, the quality of investigations, and response times to priority complaints.

"During the last four years Humewood has been working hard to get this award. As part of this plan we established several task teams to address problematic issues. We have one team that specialises in burglaries, another that specialises in robberies and so on.

"Every morning the entire station management team meets to analyse the crime patterns. Based on these ... we deploy operational staff and the relevant task teams."

Koll said a trio task team which dealt with serious crimes like hijackings, house robberies and business robberies was on the road 24 hours a day. "This is to provide a fast response time to any crime that is in progress or is deemed a priority."

As part of the initiative to clamp down on crime, Koll teamed less experienced detectives with veterans to ensure speedy results and increased productivity.

"One needs to remember that Humewood is always under the spotlight as all major beachfront events are held in our area. This alone takes massive resources to ensure crime remains low."

Warrant Officer Michael Meyer, who has been based at Humewood police station for 18 years, said teamwork at the station was what led to their success.

"Everyone at our station gets on with each other, making this a very good and productive police station," he said.

"Our entire management team has an open-door policy for anyone. If you are a cleaner or a student constable at the station and have an issue you can always go to management and they will do their utmost to sort the problem out."

Sergeant Nomakhisazana Cimani, who has been based at Humewood for 11 years, said the award was a result of hard work from all at the station.

"We have a suggestion box in the charge office and we often get such nice comments from the people who come here. We pride ourselves on doing our best for the community," she said.

The project manager of a South End development, Somikazi Maqwili, said Humewood detectives arrested a burglar within days of a break-in at the units last month.

"I went to the police station and they were just so helpful. I have never had such great service from police officers," she said.

KwaNobuhle police station commander Colonel Zolani Xawuka said the award was based on several policing strategies.

"One of our aspects was to increase visible policing and also ensure that all the components in the police worked hand in hand to ensure service delivery.

"We set up strategies to get the detectives, charge office staff, crime prevention units and all support services to work together. This in turn allowed for enhanced service delivery which saw a reduction in crime in the area," he said.

Crime pattern analysis was done daily and members deployed to specific focus areas. "This helped a lot to deter crime."

Xawuka, who only became station commander in March last year after being transferred from Jeffreys Bay, said crime analysis revealed that weekends were one of the major problematic times.

"To curb the spike in crime at the weekends I deployed more members who were tasked specifically with stop-and-search operations as well as roaming roadblocks." He said this assisted greatly in reducing and preventing crime.

"The aim was to catch potential criminals with weapons or stolen property, giving us grounds to get them off the streets."

He said the station looked forward to defending its win next year. - Gareth Wilson