Botswana Police Services (BPS) is adamant that the necessary police action in enforcing the new laws will help realize a significant decline in both road and other non-penal code offences that are otherwise a cause for public discomfort.
Botswana Police Commissioner, Thebeyame Tsimako, decided to come up with measures on how best to curb the rapid rise of crime. He revealed this at a press conference on Friday.
Tsimako said that the aim of their new initiative to invite media houses was to improve the police/media relations in the area of information sharing that would be dispersed to the public
To curb the increase of fatal road accidents and house breakÔÇôins, the Botswana Police has long used the “stop, question and search” strategy, whose operations and implementation they are now planning to massively increase.
Through their ongoing merger with the Local Police Force, the BPS’s capable manpower will be increased, therefore, enabling them to carry out different random tasks at a time.
Random and spontaneous roadblocks are also likely to be on the increase.
“An area of concern to be mentioned is the involvement of youthful drivers in fatal road accidents. From a total of 455 lives lost in road accidents last year, the majority of them were relatively young people. The accidents in which young drivers are involved are mostly due to excessive speed, drunken and reckless driving,” said Tsimako.
Murder cases in the first quarter of 2009 have escalated from 50 cases in 2008 to 61 cases to the corresponding time this year, a study carried out by the BPS has shown.
And these are just only the reported cases.
The study has also shown a massive increase in house break-ins and theft. 2009 has already seen about 1506 reported cases from a lower number of about 1267 cases in 2008.
The slightly good news though is that theft of Motor vehicles has decreased rapidly, so has the number of armed robberies, while rape has decreased by only one case.
Tsimako said the police are exploring the possibility of utilizing mobile phone short message services (sms) in the near future to improve the standards of their public education campaigns which are recently underway.
The Commissioner claims that they will this year be introducing rapid response teams that shall be placed in and out of Gaborone during the holiday seasons, such as the Christmas and New Year festive seasons, when crime has usually shown to be rampant.
