With serious crimes on the rise in the Eastern Cape, you would think every effort would be made to ensure police officers have all the resources they need.
However, this is not the case in the province as all four police helicopters are out of commission because they either need servicing or repairs.
Already the police complain about being poorly resourced, with some of their cars also in for repairs, so when all helicopters have been grounded, that affects their ability to fight crime.
Understandably, from time to time, police helicopters will need to be serviced and repaired, but you would expect that this would be done timeously instead of having them out of commission all at once.
One helicopter, the ZS-RDH, has been out of commission since 2018. It is expected to be back from April 1. The ZS-RPA is expected to be available from September 1 while the ZS-RLD and the ZS-RKN will both be available for use only on July 1 2022.
While it is true helicopters are not used for day-to-day crime-fighting operations, having zero helicopters available does not bode well for the police and the Eastern Cape. This means criminals can easily get away with crime because there are no eyes in the sky.
As is the case with visible policing on the ground, having helicopters is a deterrent to would-be criminals.
Better planning is needed in future from the police top brass to ensure we don’t have a situation where the five pilots we have in the province are sitting at home twiddling their thumbs because the tools of their trade are out of commission.
If we are serious about squeezing the space in which criminals operate, we need to utilise every resource we have, or else lawlessness will continue being the order of the day.
We cannot afford a situation where thugs are doing as they please with little chance of them being arrested.
HeraldLIVE