This communique is in response to your Facebook post on the Servamus page about the high level of police killings in South Africa.

This is a huge matter of concern as we see this yearly and forever increasing. The police, as a department, always tries its best to curb such occurrences that also display the nature of society we live in and the exposure of our citizens to such threats. Businesses suffer a lot as they are being targeted by the criminals and their syndicates and, at the end of the day, the whole picture about our country is tainted.

Police are the frontlines of defence as soon as serious cases are reported and that place them on reactive mode to handle the situation which in most cases is genuinely organised for perfection.

With such occurrences and hazardous dangers mentioned, I strongly believe and know that the department has done its best to deal with this. Circulars in terms of officer safety, handling of situations and training have been issued and national correspondence to ground structures serves as proof. However, I think the following must be done to assist.

Parliament needs to look at police killings differently than just an everyday thing, while also considering the ever-increasing level of violence our police serve under. That includes active crime syndicates who specialise in bringing arms from foreign countries and trafficking them. These firearms are used in various serious crimes including business robberies and cash-in-transit heists (CITs). Some of these arms are sold to taxi hitmen and individuals who continue to use them without any fear and of which a huge percentage of them are evidently used in CITs, which is one of the crimes frequented these days.

Border management and control should be restructured and paired with on ground intelligence activation and immigration control systems. The Home Affairs debacle of corrupt officials should be looked at differently. Modern management of data and sophisticated programmes and machines should be introduced. The security cluster must involve border management and intelligence members. INTERPOL crime circulars must also be communicated at border posts. Municipalities must develop a security enhanced plan together with the police to verify building ownership of flats and even sweep operations to rid them of illegal activities, guns and drugs.

Lastly, the concept of partnership policing must be enhanced more to allow more flow of information on crime, wanted suspects and planned robberies. Together we can do more to protect our police from being murdered like flies.

Concerned reader