How hectic was the accident?
What in the world happened here?
Is this a roadblock?
Has my licence disc been renewed?
When does my licence expire again?
These may have been some of the thoughts that southern suburbers had while travelling along the M5 this morning when they stumbled upon of the flood of City safety vehicles parked on the island in the middle of the highway.
After stretching their necks to catch a glimpse of the action as they drove past and the sigh of relief that it was not a roadblock, the next thought that probably popped up was: Well, then what exactly is going on?
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According to City’s MMC for Safety and Security JP Smith, the spectacle in the middle of the M5, near the Kromboom turn-off, was a showcase of the City of Cape Town’s massive investment into vehicles for the safety and security directorate.
‘This morning we displayed only some of our new vehicles in the directorate – this now adding to our existing fleet of over 3 000 vehicles,’ explained Smith. ‘A proud moment was seeing some of our motorbikes on display.’
Smith added that the directorate has already taken ownership of another 460 vehicles, to the value of over R106 000 000 since 2023.
If you looked closely, you may have seen Cape Town Mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis, who also attended the Disaster Risk Management campaign to welcome the over 400 new vehicles, including traffic pursuit vehicles, law enforcement vehicles, metro police vehicles, fire trucks, people movers, various patrol vehicles and motorcyles.
Hill-Lewis took to Facebook to share the news:
‘Cape Town will never stop investing to make residents in our city safer, even with the limited resources we have,’ he wrote in the caption. ‘While we fight for more policing powers for our officers, we’re still doing all we can now.’
According to a statement released by the City, the investment forms part of the City’s plans to expand criminal investigative powers for municipal law enforcement by amending the SAPS Act, as announced by Parliament’s Police Portfolio Committee’s end-of-term legacy report.
The statement added that Hill-Lewis this week wrote to the police and justice ministers calling for three policing power reforms:
- Amending the SAPS Act definition of ‘criminal investigation’ to specifically include municipal law enforcement
- Extending more Peace Officer powers to municipal officers to combat serious offences, including gang, gun and drug crime
- Giving metros a bigger say in setting local policing policy by including metro-specific policies in the National Policing Plan, as per Section 206 of the Constitution
View the full statement here.
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Picture: City of Cape Town