Background
In Ask Pollex of Servamus: January 2021, Pollex referred to an article that was published in Maroela Media relating to police stations’ areas of jurisdiction. The issue was that “police stations, more and more, offer the excuse that incidents don't fall in their area of jurisdiction whereupon complainants are shown away”.
Response
Servamus received the following response from Capt S J Grundling from The Barrage SAPS - he refers to National Instruction 3/2011 in this regard to provide clarity.
I am of the opinion that Par 2 will provide the “common sense” answer:
“Receiving of a complaint and opening a case docket
(1) When a crime or alleged crime is reported at a police station or to a member on patrol attending to complaints, irrespective of whether the crime was committed in the station area of that police station or the station area of another police station, the member receiving the report must -
(a) interview the complainant (reporter) and, by using the Definitions of Crime Manual as a guideline, ensure that what is alleged to have happened does indeed constitute a crime and if so, take down an affidavit depicting all the elements of the crime and describe in detail what happened by utilising the ‘what’, ‘when’, ‘who’, ‘where’, ‘why’, and ‘how’ principles;
(b) open a case docket (SAPS 3M) and complete it; and
(c) hand over the completed case docket (SAPS 3M) to the Community Service Centre Commander for perusal and registration on CAS.
(2) Complainants or reporters of crime must never be referred to another police station to report a crime, even if the crime was committed in another police station area.”
Capt S J Grundling
Section Commander: Crime Detection
The Barrage SAPS
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[Servamus trusts that this extract from the National Instruction will serve as a reminder to all police officials that they have a duty to deal with all crime that is reported to them irrespective of where it was committed, and provide clarity to members of the public in this regard. Ed.]
