The Grassy Park community has welcomed the removal of the station commander following on going pressure from the community. On the 11th of March, the community staged a protest and demanded that the station commander be removed. In their effort, a memorandum of demands was handed over to SAPS Provincial Commissioner and the Western Cape Minister of Community Safety.

Philip Bam, the public relations officer for the Grassy Park Community Police Forum says they hail this as a victory.

“We look forward to starting a new relationship with service delivery and a new approach to policing so that we can solve the crime in the area.”

Bam explained that one of the biggest concerns of the community was the relationship the former station commander had with the CPF.

“There was blatant undermining of the CPF. We found that there was dissention being sewed in the community. The station commanders approach was very abrasive which lead to a lot of people working with him booking of sick to go to a clinic and so on which impacted on the service delivery.”

According to Bam, the new commander has not started working yet.

“We have not been officially informed of the new station commander so he hasn’t started working yet,” he said.

The CPF have developed a new community safety plan as a result of the flare up in crime in the area.

“We have developed a community safety plan which we will confirm with the community at our meeting. In that plan we have laid out certain steps to be taken, role players that need to be involved and that includes the community, CPF and other law enforcements officials,” Bam said.

Gang violence has been seen one of the biggest problems in the area.

“One of our biggest problems is gangsterism and we are working hard against gangsterism and hope we hope that we can change the mindset of our young people so that they would not be easily lured by the gangs,” Bam concluded. VOC