WITH the third week into the year, progress is seen to be made with criminals being brought to book after integrated SAPS operations carried out over the weekend resulted in several suspects making their way to court this week for severe and violent offences.
According to provincial police spokesperson Colonel André Traut several suspects were apprehended, with two of these suspects on the top ten list of most wanted suspects in the province.
“Western Cape detectives were equally as active as their uniformed counterparts and managed to arrest a total of 534 suspects during last week’s Operation Vutha Hawe who were sought on various serious offences such as murder, attempted murder, business robbery, house robbery, assault to name but a few,” said Traut.
Fransina Lukas, chairperson of the Western Cape Community Policing Forum (CPF) board, said that despite limited resources, credit must be given to the detectives who go above and beyond to bring offenders to justice.
“Good work done by Western Cape detectives for being able to track down and apprehend the suspects despite the challenges and having little resources to their disposal. You know such things like business robbery, house robbery, assault is not only destroying our communities but it is destroying families as well, leaving a scar and rippling effect on the future of young people in our communities.
“I think if we can have more such successes, it will help us to rid streets of the violence and work towards a better future for young people in our community. So well done to the detectives, we need more of this kind of drive, action and integration with the necessary parties involved to catch the criminals,” said Lukas
Traut went on to say that as much as the holiday season is coming to an end, such operations will continue to be carried out on a daily basis to combat the severe crimes that are taking place.
“As the festive season is drawing to a close, police operations are still in full swing with large numbers of police officers deployed alongside other law enforcement partners to ensure that the communities are protected from criminals.”
“Safer festive season operations are conducted on a daily basis in various parts of the province and will continue to clamp down on serious crime and other offences such as the illegal liquor trade and lawlessness,” said Traut.
Weekend Argus