Station commander reacts to complaints

LEPHALALE – Last Thursday's community police forum (CPF) meeting was supposed to focus on the concerns of residents, but turned sour when the Lephalale police station commander accused the CPF of working against the police.
“I am concerned with the negative image the media portrays of the police due to issues discussed at these [CPF] meetings and will in future peruse the agenda with the CPF chairperson, Thys Eloff, before we hold meetings to ensure that only positive information leaves this meeting,” said Lieutenant-colonel, Daniel Ramkgoakgoa.
He was particularly concerned with an article published in Northern News on 29 April entitled “Waar is die polisie?” where community members alleged that the police did not attend to calls where criminals were trying to break into homes while the residents were home. In one incident the owner of the house allegedly waited more than eight hours for the police to arrive. By then the threat had passed.
“I invite anybody to visit the police station to see how many of our vehicles are broken,” said Ramkgoakgoa while mentioning that some of the damages to vehicles were because of police members' limited know-ledge of high-performance vehicles. “No member at the station has been trained to drive a turbo-injected Ford Ranger bakkie and this resulted in some of the vehicles sustaining engine damage.”
According to Ramkgoakgoa the community should not contact the CPF control room when they are in trouble, but should deal directly with the police station. “The control room only creates confusion with people not knowing who they should call to attend a scene.”
Eloff vehemently denied this, saying that the control room and the CPF performed a secondary duty to the police. “We make sure that the community are aware that as an organization we don’t replace the police, but I will not idly sit by while people’s lives and property are in danger.”
Ramkgoakgoa addressed the issue of high incidences of drunk driving in Lephalale saying that the station does not have the manpower to deal with it. “It takes about four hours for a police member to complete a drunk driving docket and in that time there are other crimes happening. Should we leave the other incidents where the police are needed and focus on drunk driving?”
“The CPF should rather focus on teaching community members to mark their property in order for police to be able to identify the owners once the property is recovered instead of focusing on crime prevention operations.” 
These statements were not received well by the
community members present. “It is clear that the current police system is not working and that is why we see cases where the public are starting to take the law into their own hands,” said Eloff.
“It is the duty of the community to ask members who attended their scenes late why they took so long to respond and not to make harsh judgements about the police,” Ramkgoakgoa said. He added that anyone not satisfied with the local police can contact him personally on 082 414 2724 instead of going to the media.