The 2018/19 report, which provides a study of city-level crime trends in nine South African cities over the period, suggests there is little police proactivity in the metro. This finding was made despite Mangaung residents showing relatively high levels of satisfaction with law enforcement in the same report. Residents in Mangaung also reported the second-to-lowest levels of both crime victimisation and fear of crime, something which was attributed to the metro having the lowest incidence of robbery among the nine studied cities. All the numbers quoted in the study by The Urban Safety Reference Group (USRG), convened by the South African Cities Network (SACN) with the support of the GIZ-Inclusive Violence and Crime Prevention (VCP) Programme, are incidents recorded per 100 000. The cities covered in the report are classified as economic centres, “growing twice as fast as other cities and towns”. These areas – including, Johannesburg, Cape Town, eThekwini and Nelson Mandela Bay, amongst others - have the highest incidences of crime in the country.

In January 2019, the Free State Provincial Police Commissioner, Moeketsi Sempe, lamented that police stations in the province are still short-staffed despite the province having had welcomed over 300 newly trained police officers in late December 2018. Sempe told OFM News that every month police officers retire and some are dismissed, resulting in some gaps opening up at police stations in the province. He says the then 346 newly trained police officers will alleviate the burden experienced somewhat and help improve the situation. In total, the police officers were spread across 87 police stations in the province including Mangaung, Zamdela, Bethlehem and Phuthaditjhaba. Some of them were deployed to ports of entry including the airports and the public policing unit.

OFM News