Gauteng's crime fight goes hi-tech

By Leon Engelbrecht, ITWeb senior writer

Johannesburg, 15 Aug 2007

Gauteng is increasingly deploying IT to better fight crime in the province.

Yesterday, community safety MEC Firoz Cachalia announced a number of measures to sustain what he called a downward trend in crime.

This includes completing the deployment of the Gauteng Information on Police Performance System (GIPPS) and the commissioning of a R600 million 10111 centre in Midrand, as well as a Crime Information Management Centre, in Parktown, next month. The 10111 centre will be the hub of a new R506 million digital terrestrial trunked radio communications network.

Cachalia made the announcements at a media briefing on the outcome of Gauteng's anti-crime initiatives for the first six months of 2007, the province's most recent crime trends and patterns, and the way forward for law enforcement in Gauteng for the next six months.

"For the next six months, more work will be done to improve police response to violent organised crimes by the establishment of a Gauteng Crime Information Management Centre next month and the development of a police station protocol for improving local level police responses," he said.

The Gauteng Crime Information Management Centre will improve the strategic guidance and support provided to local police stations to tackle cases of violent organised crime with the intention of improving police detection of perpetrators. The centre is under construction at the police's Gauteng headquarters in Parktown.

The centre will be IT-intensive and use database and business intelligence tools to collect, analyse and disseminate data on reported cases, trends and related information.

Keeping track

Cachalia's community safety committee will also work with the police to support police stations in the province that have been identified as struggling with crime and service delivery.

"Our GIPPS has been developed and allows us to track crime and police performance in each of the 130 police precincts throughout the province.

"We will use the system to identify the stations that need support and then carefully identify the specific challenges that need to be addressed to improve performance against priority crimes and service delivery. This information will be provided to relevant Community Policing Forums," he added.

It is expected that about 30 police stations around the province will need the assistance.

GIPPS is styled after the New York Police Department's (NYPD's) CompStat (Computer Statistics) system. CompStat has been assisting New York City since the 1990s in holding the NYPD accountable.

The wikipedia describes CompStat as "a multi-layered dynamic approach to crime reduction, quality of life improvement, and personnel and resource management. CompStat employs geographic information systems and was intended to map crime and identify problems."

Bigger picture

GIPPS will, for the first time, give a province the ability to monitor the incidence of crime and the performance of the criminal justice system in its totality. "It gets the provincial government more involved in policing than previously by using data and technology," a departmental source says.

The source adds that GIPPS will provide the province with monthly crime, policing and court statistics. It will monitor arrest rates, reported cases and track those cases, allowing Gauteng officials to see how many cases are withdrawn by complainants or the police, and how many proceed to court. They will be able to verify how many cases result in conviction and how many are withdrawn by the prosecution.

The source says much of this data is already tracked but up to now not transversally over a number of departments - and not by a province. "Selecting specific indicators, such as those from existing databases, will give the provincial government an overall picture of what is happening regarding crime and policing."

Cachalia said the new 10111 Police Emergency Response Centre, in Midrand, will be commissioned "by the end of October".