Shotspotter stopped…
CAPE TOWN ABANDONS “GAME-CHANGING” R32M CRIME PREVENTION PROJECT
10 February 2021
It cost ratepayers R32m, and was vigorously marketed by the city as a game-changer in reducing shooting crimes on the Cape Flats, but it has now been confirmed that Cape Town quietly abandoned its much-heralded Shotspotter crime prevention project in 2019.
It took two sets of written questions in the Western Cape Provincial Legislature last year (both sets of questions attached) to prise this information from MEC for Local Government Anton Bredell.
In his written response, finally tabled this week, Bredell was at pains to defend the project’s value for money. He offered no reasons for its abandonment when the city’s contract with the US owners of the technology expired in 2019.
Between 2016 and 2019, Shotspotter recorded 6688 incidents of gunfire, he said. Usually, most incidents of gunfire go unrecorded as they are not reported unless they lead to injury or death. Using the technology together with CCTV resulted in the “successful arrest of a number of perpetrators”, and the recovery of 60 firearms, 1010 rounds of ammunition and eight imitation firearms.
There was no gunfire detection system currently in use in Cape Town, he said.
When introduced in 2016, the technology was proclaimed (and widely publicised) by City politicians as evidence of their commitment to eliminate gangsterism and violence from the communities of Hanover Park and Manenberg. Later, caught up in the hype, Councillor JP Smith, announced that the technology had increased the recovery of firearms by a factor of five.
But crime statistics provided by the police for this period show no noticeable changes…
Curiously, the City’s 2020/2021 Annual Police Plan identifies the “abundance of illegal firearms” used in the commission of violent crime as a “grave concern” and identifies gunshot detection technology (Shotspotter) as part of its “Innovative Policing to enhance methodoligy” (sic) – despite MEC Bredell’s confirmation that no such project exists.
The Annual Police Plan misleads, while families on the Cape Flats continue living under siege.
The Mayor and his councillors must stop bamboozling ratepayers with hyperbole and fake news. In particular, the City must stop paying lip service to people for whom navigating an environment of criminality and gangsterism is not a game of cowboys and crooks but part of their daily lived reality.
The R32m spent on the Shotspotter show might have funded community-based organisations doing real work to develop more caring people and safer communities.
In the meantime, we will alert the Provincial Commissioner of Police that the Annual Police Plan she certified is phoney.
Ends…