71% of WC police stations have fewer officers than in 2017
3 May 2022
Over the past five financial years approximately 71% of the Western Cape's 151 police stations have seen a decrease in the number of officers allocated to them. As such, this means there are 804 fewer police officers situated at stations in the province than there were back in 2017. This was revealed by the South African Police Service in response to a DA parliamentary question.
These numbers once again highlight the under-resourcing we face in the Western Cape in terms of the allocations towards our crime-fighting efforts. When reading the police officer deployments in conjunction with the latest Recorded Crime Statistics between October and December 2021, a number of concerning trends emerge at the following police stations:
Cape Town Central, where deployment allocations fell from 525 to 425, experienced an increase of 30.8% in contact crimes;
Belhar, where deployment allocations fell from 103 to 94, experienced an increase of 162.5% in attempted murders;