Mayco member JP Smith has bumped heads with City of Cape Town officials over a proposed increase in the reward offered for tip-offs.
|||Cape Town - Mayco member for safety and security JP Smith has bumped heads with City of Cape Town officials over a proposed increase in the reward offered for public information on criminal activity in the city.
The city offers a maximum reward of R1 000 for a public tip-off reported to the city’s three policing departments if it leads to an arrest or the handing-in of illegal or stolen goods.
On Tuesday, the city’s mayoral committee was asked to approve an increase of up to R5 000.
“Raising the cap will allow us to get even better tip-offs,” said Smith.
“As one resident remarked in Manenberg, before gangsters used to pay us to keep quiet, now there’s money on the table.”
But the city’s legal and compliance managers advised that a reward only be paid out after a conviction.
Smith said this was a “nonsensical” condition because people could wait years to be paid.
The public would be more reluctant to provide tip-offs if they had to wait for a conviction, Smith argued.
“People will not be prepared to risk their necks for R1 000.”
The city’s legal director Lungelo Mbandazayo said it would be a “huge problem” to pay a reward before there was a successful conviction.
He was supported by the city’s executive director for compliance, Gerhard Ras.
“It can lend itself to the recycling of the same customers,” he said.
Smith refuted this claim. “The tip-offs we are getting are worth 10 times the money we are spending and the deaths we are preventing.”
According to the council’s system of delegations, a reward must be approved by the city manager and the chief financial officer.
Since launching the initiative in October 2013, 32 applications for the payment of rewards have been submitted by the city’s policing departments, with a total value of R30 500.
The tip-offs have led to 48 arrests for at least six cases of murder, 12 for dealing in drugs, five for the illegal possession of firearms, one of attempted murder, six of kidnapping and 18 theft cases.
Drugs to the value of R485 780 have been confiscated.
“The initiative proved to be successful and it is therefore proposed that the maximum amount payable for information received be increased to R5 000,” said the motivation for the proposed amendment.
Mayor Patricia de Lille suggested that the matter be withdrawn from the agenda until mayco had been properly briefed by officials on the proposed changes.
Smith said he was disappointed that the matter could not be concluded at the meeting, saying to officials: “In case you haven’t noticed, our city is burning.”
lindsay.dentlinger@inl.co.za
Cape Argus