Neighbourhood Watches reject plan for control by cops

Draft guidelines which would see the police have greater control over Neighbourhood Watches – and even access to their bank accounts – are causing rising tensions.

While police have cited concerns over uniformity – and even alleged racial profiling – the community anti-crime units are infuriated that police are meddling in their affairs.

Thousands of residents in the province belong to Neighbourhood Watches, street committees and similar structures.

The guidelines have not yet been finalised despite being drafted by the Department of Safety and Liaison in 2016.

However, more recent discussion over their implementation has led to panic among Neighbourhood Watches, with an urgent meeting for all Port Elizabeth branches being held at the Londt Park Sports Club tomorrow, with no police or Community Policing Forum (CPF) members allowed to attend.

Some have called the guidelines a ploy by the CPF and the government to control the Neighbourhood Watches and gain access to their funds. Several Neighbourhood Watches have warned the move would see themselves and residents distance themselves from the CPF and the police.

The guidelines include rules such as patrollers not being allowed to carry any form of weapon and a Neighbourhood Watch having to join a CPF and comply with its regulations in addition to police being made a signatory on the Neighbourhood Watch bank account.

Farm Com – a farming-based Neighbourhood Watch on the outskirts of Port Elizabeth with 285 voluntary members – has warned it would look at legal action and alternatives should the guidelines become a reality.

Farm Com chairman Willie Bosch said: “The fact that our state is too weak to fulfil its responsibility of keeping its citizens safe, meant communities were forced to create bodies such as Neighbourhood Watches.

“These guidelines were drafted without any input from the NHWs and it is obvious the document creates a feeling the police are anti-Neighbourhood Watches.

“There is no law that says an NHW must be associated or belong to any police services. We can and will operate on our own.”

Lorraine Neighbourhood Watch chairman Peter Graham said: “We are one of the largest Neighbourhood Watches in the area with more than 100 active patrollers and 2 000 spotters.

“All my people are volunteers and patrol with all costs coming out of their own pockets.

“It is time for the hundreds, if not thousands of volunteer patrollers to oppose the unrealistic rules they are trying to apply.

“When they look again they will have no more volunteers and an even higher crime rate.”

Bluewater Bay Neighbourhood Watch has 145 volunteers, of whom 50 patrol the streets.

Its head, Craig Hendricks, called the guidelines flawed and an attempt by the department to control funds raised. Safety and liaison community police relations director Neil Naidoo – who signed off the guidelines – insisted all Neighbourhood Watches had to be part of the CPF, but failed to clarify why they wanted signing power over bank accounts.

Asked to cite the law which states a Neighbourhood Watch has to join the CPF, Naidoo failed to do so.

“There is nothing final in the document and you are looking at outdated documents,” he said.

Asked for a copy of the “new” guidelines, he declined to send them and failed to answer why they had not consulted with any Neighbourhood Watches.

He said they were not allowing any parallel police service to operate, which was why they wanted all NHWs to fall under CPF policies.

Naidoo said some NHWs were operating as a law unto themselves and were racially profiling people.

“I am saying their conduct is almost where they predominantly look at black people as suspicious,” he said.

“One of the criteria is for all members to have undergone police screening [clearance]. Don’t you want to know that a criminal is not driving around your area?”

Provincial police spokeswoman Colonel Sibongile Soci said the guidelines were under discussion and aimed to place all Neighbourhood Watches under the CPF umbrella.

She said one goal was to eliminate conflict between police and Neighbourhood Watches.