City of Cape Town to share crime intelligence with neighbourhood watches
"Neighbourhood watches play a huge role in keeping communities safe,” says JP Smith, Mayoral Committee Member for Safety and Security at the City of Cape Town.
Photo: Unsplash/Alan J. Hendry
John Maytham speaks to JP Smith, Mayoral Committee Member for Safety and Security at the City of Cape Town.
The City of Cape Town's Safety and Security Department aims to partner with neighbourhood watches around the City to help keep vulnerable communities safe with its Civil Security Collaboration Initiative.
The idea came in 2022 when information about protesting and looting circulated in neighbourhood watch groups first, enabling these groups to warn police in Durban and Cape Town.
Smith says his department will continue to work with neighbourhood watches around the City and has started training sessions recently in a virtual dry run to test the newly formed initiative.
The City hopes to integrate its communication systems and intelligence-sharing with those of neighbourhood watches.
"Neighbourhood watches play a huge role to keep communities safe."
- JP Smith, Safety and Security - City of Cape Town
"We will do some kind of collective agreement around it to get everyone on the same page, do drills and simulate various incidents from a child going missing to taxi strikes or public disorder and then getting neighbourhood watches to respond to those incidents."
- JP Smith, Safety and Security - City of Cape Town
Scroll up to the audio player to listen to the full conversation.