The SA Police Service (SAPS) has failed to meet several crime reduction targets it set itself for the period 2014/15.

Police had set itself a target of reducing serious crimes by 2% from 1 826 967 to 1 718 191.

But the overall number of serious crimes decreased by only 0.3% – to 1 820 796.

SAPS had aimed to reduce crimes against women by 2% but instead more women were victims of crime.

The police did, however, reach its target of reducing crimes against children. It had aimed to reduce crimes in this category by 2% to 45 888, but a total of 41 402 crimes were reported for the period.

Its conviction rate for crimes against women was on target at 82.68% and against children 76.05% – above the target of 75.2%.

It did not reach its target of 84.3% on the number of lost or stolen firearms recovered. This included the number of firearms reported stolen or robbed and state-owned firearms.

The recovery rate was 73.1%. But it was noted that inadequate implementation of internal controls resulted in the late circulation of details of some of the recovered firearms and in some cases details were not circulated at all.

PORTFOLIO COMMITTEE

The target to recover 46% of stolen or robbed vehicles was exceeded with a recovery rate of 52.9%.

Of these, the police could positively link 30 667 vehicles to their owners; 5 519 unidentified vehicles were recovered.

The parliamentary portfolio committee on police was concerned that police officers did not use their pocket books properly, meaning vital information – such as the time of an incident – was not always available or accurate.

It noted that 48% of the claimed reaction times could not be verified because of this tendency. In the 2013/14 period, 38% of reaction times could not be verified.

Reaction times were divided into three categories, “Alpha” – serious complaints in progress; “Bravo” – serious complaints that had already happened and “Charlie” – other complaints. It took police an average of 18:26 minutes to respond to Alpha complaints, 23:13 minutes for Bravo complaints and 22:01 minutes for Charlie complaints.

Detectives notched up 363 life sentences for the period 2014/15, involving 288 people for crimes that included murder, rape, house robbery, business robbery and armed robbery. News24