Concern over high crime rate

Source: Concern over high crime rate | The Herald July 2, 2019

Mashonaland West Bureau
Police here have voiced concern over the high crime rate across the province, vowing to increase detection and prevention of criminal activities.

The ZRP provincial leadership, which met journalists in Chinhoyi last week, said they were satisfied with the arrests made as they increase efforts to fight crime in the province.

The meeting, attended by the Officer Commanding (Operations) Mashonaland West Assistant Commissioner Martin Nyirenda and his counterpart in charge of crime Assistant Commissioner Fungai Dengu, drew journalists from all media organisations in the province.

In her remarks, Asst Comm Dengu said the police were worried by the rate of murder, rape, stocktheft, car hijackings, armed robberies and unlawful entry.

“There is high crime rate in Mashonaland West, especially crimes of concern,” she said.

“These include murder and rape which have been on a sharp increase. We are trying to prevent these crimes because our duty is to prevent and detect crime. We are trying as a province to detect and prevent these criminal activities, but the crime rate in Mashonaland West is very high. The rate of armed robberies was very high, but it is going down, including unlawful entry and rape cases which were also high, but have gone down. However, the crime which is of concern is stocktheft and is relatively high, but not bad. We are in control of most of the crimes of concern in Mashonaland West and they are going down, so we have to work hard for them to continue decreasing.”

Asst Comm Dengu said police would put more effort in the detection of crime for effective prevention. Asst Comm Nyirenda urged journalists to work with the police force during its re-branding programme and effective crime prevention.

“We are in the process of rebranding after the organisation had come to a point where we could not do our duties in a proper way,” he said. It was becoming difficult to execute our duties and our commander Commissioner-General Matanga found it necessary to come up with a new theme in the Zimbabwe Republic Police.”

The theme is “ZRP Rebranding to Restore Public Confidence for Peace and Economic Development in the Second Republic”.

He said the media played an important in the rebranding exercise.