What Police Commissioner Sithole’s top three agenda items should be
While the DA still has reservations about the new permanent National Police Commissioner, Lieutenant General Khehla John Sithole, he must hit the ground running to drive the massive task of turning the South African Police Service (SAPS) around to being a professional and effective police service that can truly tackle and reduce crime.
We believe that General Sithole's top three agenda items from day one of his first full day on the job should be:
1) Addressing the 4Us: We all know that the SAPS at station level is chronically under-staffed, under-trained, under-equipped and under-resourced. The new Police Commissioner must urgently address this problem by ensuring that he gets the basics of human resource, financial, supply chain and asset management right.
He must 'de-bloat' the police service by rationalising the SAPS National Office and Provincial Offices to divert more posts into the operational field and out of desk-bound, paper-pushing administrative functions. He can ensure this by putting an end to any exorbitant or wasteful spending that deprives police stations and the communities they serve of much-needed policing resources.
2) Fixing our Crime Intelligence-in-Crisis: This division has been in shambles with declining performance over years. Over the last half a decade, the number of crime threat analysis reports that enable police commanders at stations to better target their resources at those perpetrating organised crime produced has more than halved.