Nelson Mandela Bay’s specialised rapid-response unit is down to only one operational vehicle to respond to priority and serious crimes in progress.
The glaring fleet shortage in the city’s Flying Squad unit hampers service delivery as members often have to go on leave or sit in police stations.
The unit has a total of seven vehicles, down from 20.
But of the seven, two are allocated to the accident response team.
And from the remaining five, only one is operational — a single cab bakkie.
Among the vehicles that are out of service are three BMWs.
The state of the Flying Squad unit was revealed during an oversight inspection led by the chair of the parliamentary portfolio committee on police, MP Ian Cameron, on Monday.
Cameron visited several policing units in the city, including the anti-gang and K9 units, after DA leaders in the Eastern Cape raised concerns in a letter to suspended police minister Senzo Mchunu and submitted formal questions in the Bhisho legislature.
Cameron said the shortage of vehicles was a significant management issue, not only in the province but nationally.
“Looking at statistics in this unit currently, they only managed to work on three incidents the entire weekend,” Cameron said.
“This is not because the members are too lazy to work.
“They show up but there are no vehicles for them to attend to serious crimes.
“When I look at the situation in the K9 unit, it is not better.
“There are only two narcotics dogs for this entire district, which makes it difficult to fight the gang-violence issue.
“There are members who have been at this unit for many years and still have not been trained with dogs.
“There are also trained members that don’t have dogs, and dogs that are trained but are not assigned due to unnecessary bureaucracy.”
Cameron’s issues with the police units were also exacerbated by broken supply chain management at the national level.
In the 2024/2025 financial year, the police at a national level recorded more than R650m in irregular expenditure.
“Imagine how we could have resourced the Flying Squad unit here with that money.
“We keep hearing promises about the police being capacitated, but what’s the point of adding members when there are no vehicles to attend to issues?”
Cameron said he would compile an oversight report, including specific questions on the fleet shortages.
Five years ago, the K9 unit had a staff complement of 40, which has since dropped to 22.
There are 13 dogs in total, of which five are for patrols during shifts.
The rest are for explosives, narcotics, search and rescue, fire investigation and protected species.
The K9 unit has four operating vehicles.
Flying Squad support head Warrant Officer Jacques Landman said their biggest challenge was the unavailability of vehicles.
“We have seven vehicles in the unit; two are allocated to the accident response team,” Landman said.
“The other five are three BMWs for rapid response, one single cab and a double cab bakkie.
“Only the single cab bakkie is operational at the moment, which we shouldn’t be using to respond to priority crimes but we have no option.
“One of the BMWs we used for crime response had gone for repairs and was returned on Wednesday [last week].
“It was used in one shift and it would not start after that.
“The two accident response vehicles are only used for one purpose and not for crime response.
“With this one working vehicle, most members take leave or go and sit in the charge office at the stations or go and work with the K9 unit if they have space.
“We used to have 20 high-performance vehicles; 16 sedans and four bakkies.
“Now we use our personal vehicles to do some of the police work because there are no cars.”
Landman said service delivery had suffered, with the number of recorded arrests declining.
He said the telephone lines at the Flying Squad unit stopped working three years ago due to cable theft.
ShotSpotter, an acoustic gunshot detection system that alerts police to gunfire and is credited for reducing shootings in the city, stopped working in December 2023 when the Nelson Mandela Bay metro failed to secure a new contract.
The city’s mobile surveillance vehicle, designed to provide real-time, on-site monitoring with advanced technology, has been out of service for years.
Surveillance cameras in crime hotspots are not linked to the city for proper monitoring.
DA provincial chair Yusuf Cassim said following a petition they sent to Cameron’s office regarding the policing issues in the city, a hearing was held and a report with recommendations was adopted by parliament.
“Those recommendations included increasing the capacity of the gang unit and crime intelligence in the city.
“There was a deadline of July for this to be done.
“Crime intelligence has not been capacitated in this province, besides additional students added in their ranks.”
Cassim said that during their inspection of the anti-gang unit, they found only four working vehicles available for its 110 members, who patrol areas as far as Humansdorp.
Eastern Cape police spokesperson Lieutenant-Colonel Siphokazi Mawisa said on Monday night that the SAPS could guarantee that despite the resource challenges in some units in the district, there was a contingency plan in place to ensure service delivery was not affected, and there were always police patrols in all the hotspot areas.
“Recently, as part of the Safer Festive Season Operations, police had since deployed additional forces in strategic areas, with notable successes,” Mawisa said.
“During the launch of The Eastern Cape Safer Festive Season in October, the Nelson Mandela Bay District received a total of 28 new vehicles to augment their fleet, and some of those were allocated to the northern areas.”
Mawisa said that not long ago, the district was capacitated with a total of 101 newly appointed police constables, and visible policing received a sizeable number, with 40 of them joining the anti-gang Unit.
“The SAPS is refuting the assertion of total or partial collapse of policing in the Nelson Mandela Bay District.
“SAPS cannot deny the fact that some vehicles are booked in the garages for either mechanical or body repair work.
“As soon as those vehicles are repaired they are ready to serve the communities and increase visibility.”
The Herald