Gauteng police boss, Lieutenant-General Elias Mawela.
PHOTO: Alfonso Nqunjana/News24
- Contact crimes in Gauteng have increased by 6% for the quarter under review as compared to the same period last year.
- This was revealed by Gauteng police commissioner, Lieutenant General Elias Mawela.
- He said “assault common and assault with intent to cause grievous bodily harm” are still the main contributors to the overall contact crime statistics.
Contact crimes in Gauteng have increased by 6% for the quarter under review, as compared to the same period last year.
With 42 752 offences, they were the major contributors to crime in the province.
This was revealed by Gauteng police commissioner Lieutenant General Elias Mawela while tabling the 2023 second quarter crime statistics in the provincial legislature on Tuesday.
“Assault common and assault with intent to cause grievous bodily harm are still the main contributors to our overall contact crime,” he said.
“For the quarter under review, these two offences have increased by 11.3% and 7.8%, respectively with a combined 20 088 counts more.”
A total of 13 214 people were arrested for contact crime offences, Mawela revealed.
He added that while the murder rate remained stable, it was still high. It is 1 489, down one from last year’s 1 490.
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Mawela said that 167 of the victims were women, while 47 were children. The rest were men.
“Even though there is a reduction in crimes, it may be meaningless to the families of the 1 489 people, inclusive of 167 women and 47 children, killed during the quarter under review.”
According to Mawela, police also seized 1 877 illegal, unlicensed and stolen firearms, 21 517 rounds of ammunition, and 1 244 dangerous weapons during their targeted crime intelligence-led operations, vehicle checkpoints, and stop and searches.
He added that cash-in-transit robberies had decreased by 38.9%, while truck hijackings went down by 4%.
“The category of contact-related crimes, which comprises arson and malicious property damage, was reduced by 1.8%. For the period under review, we were also able to arrest 2 318 suspects.
“The other sub-categories of contact crime, including robbery with aggravating circumstances, have increased by 1.5%.
This is due to the increase in robberies at residential premises and robberies at business premises by 13.7% and 1.8% respectively.”
