Crime drop stats 'meaningless'

2008-03-04 13:07

Johannesburg - The Democratic Alliance in Gauteng questioned claims by the safety MEC that crime had gone down because it had not been given a chance to study the report on which the trends were based before its release to the media.

"These statistics are next to meaningless.

"Only he [Firoz Cachalia] sees them and only he gets to select which statistics to show us because of the government's insane attempt at [public relations] by suppressing regular crime statistics," DA security spokesperson John Moodey said.

The initiatives had also not first been presented to the portfolio committee of the Gauteng Legislature, which oversees the operations of his department, Moodey added.

"This committee is given none of these statistics and given no chance to question him on them."

He told Sapa: "We should have been informed and should have had an opportunity to look at these crime trends and ask some pertinent questions so that we would be able to defend his statement."

He would have liked to have ascertained a breakdown of the crimes that the 230 000 people arrested were alleged to have committed.

"It would be interesting to know how many of these arrests were for serious crimes and how many were successfully prosecuted."

Spokesperson Thapelo Moiloa said the document outlining the trends was available for scrutiny.

The crime trends released by Cachalia are separate to the statistics periodically released by national police.

According to Cachalia's report, 61% of all Gauteng policing precincts recorded a decrease in violent crimes between July and December 2007 compared to the same period the previous year.

- SAPA