Incompetent senior management in the South African Police Services is to blame for the neglect in its K9-units.
The DA called on the Western Cape Police Commissioner, Lt.Gen. Thembisile Patekile, to urgently address the severe shortage of police dogs in Cape Town and to explain why the metropole only has two operational narcotics dogs.
During an unannounced oversight visit to the Cape Town K9-unit on Monday , the DA discovered that 75 trained K9-handlers in the Province don’t have dogs, and more than 50% of the trained handlers in the Cape Town, Franschhoek and Stellenbosch, do not have dogs.
Many of the operational dogs are aging out of service.Beaufort West, a critical location for anti-poaching and crime control, has only five operational dogs.
The Cape Town K9-unit only has 49 members, instead of the required 98.
and urgently needs more narcotics, explosives, rescue, and abalone detection dogs.
The DA pointed out that police dogs are widely considered a “force multiplier”.
The shortage of dogs and SAPS’ inability to train more dogs and handlers, appears to be due to the inefficient and outdated centralised breeding and training program in Roodeplaat, Pretoria.
SAPS management nationally lacks an understanding of the impact of this resource.
Private security firms and other law enforcement agencies buy pre-trained dogs who can be socialised and operationalised within six weeks, while SAPS’ current in-house training process takes six months or more.
[Photo: Facebook SAPS]