Western Cape Premier Alan Winde announced the establishment of a panel of experts to deal with the report by the Western Cape Police Ombudsman into the alleged links between gangs and provincial cops, which found evidence that the claims could be substantiated.

Winde made the announcement during his State of the Province Address on Thursday.

He announced two key steps: “I am now in the process of establishing a panel of eminent persons to make specific recommendations as to how we should respond to this cancer which has infected our policing, and as a start to ensure that our crime-fighting leadership is untarnished by the proceeds of crime.”

Winde added that the provincial government would fund lifestyle audits for the top brass involved in crime fighting.

“We want to make sure that, in the words of Judge Daniel Thulare, those SAPS members who are at the ‘the table where the provincial commissioner of the SAPS in the Western Cape sits with his senior managers’ are untarnished.

“I believe these lifestyle audits are important for our oversight duty,” he said.

Winde said there were encouraging signs in the war against crime, but it was an ongoing struggle.

In December last year, the police ombud, retired Major-General Oswald Reddy, handed his report to Winde after a thorough investigation into alleged links between gangsters and police in the province.

The investigation came after Thulare delivered a judgment in the Western Cape High Court in October last year, where he stated there was evidence that gang members had infiltrated top management structures in the police.

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At the time, Winde maintained they had to act within their limited mandate on the issue to confirm what many residents of the Western Cape had long suspected: that some SAPS members were colluding with gangsters.

“[They are] effectively abandoning their oath to protect and serve, instead choosing to make many of our gang-stricken communities even more unsafe,” he said.

News24