City of Cape Town Safety and Security MMC JP Smith has called on the Western Cape Government to facilitate talks with the South African Police Services (SAPS) and national government for the province or metro to conduct its own firearm ballistic testing.

While speaking during a virtual briefing, Smith made the request for additional policing power, due to the major backlog at labs that are overburdened. He explained that this results in a low conviction rate, as 1650 firearm arrests that have been conducted by the City’s law enforcement agencies are still being processed.

He said that while LEAP (Law Enforcement Advancement Plan) officers have cleared Cape Town’s streets of 700 guns since its inception, convictions remain low because of the challenges at national level.

“This is one area where we are starting to talk to you as provincial government about how we do that (firearm ballistic testing) ourselves, how we put it to SAPS and national government that we can do this ballistic testing ourselves to remove that bottleneck, so that we can move from a 1% conviction rate to a much higher rate and that will bring much greater relief to these communities who, at the moment, are just seeing these gangsters recycled back into their criminal actions,” Smith appealed.

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