Aiming at cyberspace in Randburg

By Sheree Russouw

IF Mike Hogan's dream of virtual policing is realised, police at the Randburg Police Station will soon be e-mailing your affidavits and statements to you. Together with the 10 members of the Randburg Community Policing Forum (CPF), Hogan is hard at work in his efforts to catapult the local police into the digital age.

They are salvaging and rebuilding broken computers, which were donated by local businesses, to bring local police in line with technology. But the bulk of police officers at the station still need to be trained in basic computer skills, says Hogan, the chairman of the CPF.

"Our objective is to put computers into each station so that all of the officers will be online, which will make police work much easier," he says, adding that he hopes this will improve not only the efficiency but also the service of the local police.

While the e-forum, as it is called, may take some time yet to bear fruit, other forums that the CPF champions are proving successful, says Hogan. These include the bank forum, schools forum, residents' forum and the garage forum.

"If you tie up all of these initiatives, it becomes quite a positive paradigm in terms of what the CPF does. To me this is the reality of sector policing."

Randburg police have divided the area into seven zones, each of which is manned by a sector manager who works with local residents' associations.

Hogan, who runs a brokerage firm in Illovo, has been involved in community work for as long as he can remember. "I like putting stuff back into the community," he says. He was a police reservist for 10 years, the chairman of Fourways High School and the chairman of the local block watch in Bryanston. "When someone's lights go off, I'm the person they call," he laughs.

Working with the police has given him a vantage point, Hogan says. "I've been in the area for a long time. I have attended to crimes. I know what is involved from a police perspective. I know all about the paperwork and how the system works. I'm one of them, even though I'm in a suit and tie; I can still talk to the police and that helps in my work with the community."

The CPF interacts regularly with local bank managers to discuss better methods of improving security at banks. Similarly, it meets with garage owners and staff - who are often visible and vulnerable victims of crime because of their around-the-clock work hours - and examines how they can best beef up their security.

As part of the schools forum, local police officers venture to Randburg's schools and talk to schoolchildren, teachers and principals alike about how to control the inflow of drugs at their schools. This forum is closely associated with the CPF's peer counselling programme, says Hogan. "It strives to teach children how to recognise signs that their friends are in trouble. The aim of the programme is to use peer pressure in a positive and not a negative way."

The Adopt-A-Cop programme works in a similar vein: schools adopt a police officer who then talks with school children about drugs, abuse and sexuality. The goal of reaching out to young people, Hogan says, is to portray a "user-friendly image" of the police.

Prior to 1994, the image of the police was not at all user-friendly, he says. "For many years, the police were viewed as a paramilitary organisation, one that was synonymous with incarceration and punishment." It has been a long haul to improve the negative image associated with the police but Hogan believes that this image is changing with the monitoring of police by CPFs across the country.

"We've gone to great lengths to change this negative image of the police. It is no longer a military organisation and I don't think it is viewed as one. At Randburg, we have changed our charge office and is now in the process of transforming it into a clience service centre where people can discuss what has happened to them in private cubicles. Our décor is more modernised, and our precinct looks more like a bank than a police station," he says.

It helps that the police and the CPF work well together, says Captain Jan du Plessis, the station's communications officer and one of two police officers on the member list of the CPF. "We don't have a problem with one another. I think that the police see that the CPF is there to help us as the police, and they are not there to tell us how to do our job," he says.

This cooperation has resulted in positive results. In the last two years, crime in Randburg has dropped significantly. Then crime was so rife that its police station was afforded "special attention" and dubiously regarded as a priority station. Hogan credits the community with the reduction in criminal activity, with bodies like the Residents' Association Forum acting as the ears and eyes of the community.

"They know the three blocks in their area better than the police do," he says. "It is often the residents who have valuable information about people dealing in drugs or homes in residential suburbs where drug activities are taking place. They're suspicious from a planning point of view and help clean the area up. Everyone, from business to the community to the police, gets something from it," says Hogan.

But there is still some way to go in reducing robberies in Randburg, which is hit by an average of one armed robbery every day, according to Du Plessis. Other activities contributing to crime in the area are theft of cars and from cars. To help the victims of crime, the CPF has helped set up a victim empowerment centre at the station whereby 30 counsellors, who study psychology at Rand Afrikaans University, debrief and counsel those affected by crime.

There is a lack of awareness in the community about the role and function of the CPF, says Hogan. "A lot of people don't fully appreciate the role of CPF - that it is a communication medium that is raising the profile of the police. A problem is that a lot of people don't even know what a CPF is."

For more information, contact Mike Hogan at (011) 449-9012 or e-mail him at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it or contact Captain Jan du Plessis at (011) 449-9065.