The Grassy Park Community Police Forum (CPF) will be demanding better service delivery during a march on Saturday March 11.
They will meet on the corner of Buck Road and 5th Avenue, Lotus River, at 10am, and proceed along 5th Avenue to the Grassy Park police station where Community Safety MEC Dan Plato will receive a memorandum from them at noon.
The march follows many initiatives, including an official call for a commission of inquiry into the state of policing at Grassy Park, said Philip Bam, spokesperson for Grassy Park CPF.
The community of Grassy Park is unhappy with what they say is poor service delivery with long response times, lack of feedback on cases, being told that there are not enough patrol vehicles to attend to complaints and the weak efforts to oppose bail resulting in repeat offenders being back on the streets after arrests, he said.
“Complainants, in some cases, waited for days before a police official attended their complaints. Burglaries in progress don’t get immediate response. Even when community and neighbourhood watches apprehend suspects, police response is slow and sometimes the neighbourhood
watch is forced to let the suspect go because of lack of police response. Often police refuse to open cases when the community wants to lay charges. It has become so bad that community members have to make citizen’s arrests and transport suspects in their own vehicles to the police station for formal arrest,” said Mr
Bam.
For more information, you can contact Mr Bam on 083 658
3885.
