GEORGE NEWS - With 35 years of experience in the South African police force, the newly appointed Garden Route District Police Commissioner, Maj-Gen Norman Modishana, has made his way through the ranks. He officially took office in George on Friday 1 July.
Modishana started his police career in 1987 and served as an instructor in Hammanskraal until 1992, after which he was transferred to Soweto.
In 1995 he was promoted to Lieutenant and left Soweto to join the public order police unit (Pops) in Pretoria.
He obtained the rank of Captain in 2001 and joined the national intervention unit, also in Pretoria.
In 2004 he headed the unit as commander in Cape Town and in 2011 Modishana was promoted to Brigadier, heading Operational Response Services in the Western Cape with units like Pops, the national intervention unit and tactical response teams under his command.
In 2016 he was transferred to Mpumalanga before he became the Garden Route's district police commissioner as major-general.
New district model
The old police cluster structure, where there were two separate cluster offices in George (Eden Cluster) and Mossel Bay (Da Gamaskop Cluster), has been discontinued. These offices have been amalgamated to form the new Garden Route district offices.
The district model has now been rolled out in the Western Cape, starting with the Garden Route. Modishana is therefore the first district commissioner to be appointed in the province.
Other districts will also be identified in the province. Modishana currently has 21 police stations under his command - from Heidelberg and Plettenberg Bay to Meiringspoort, Kannaland and Uniondale.
Brig Belinda Pather has been appointed as the deputy district commissioner who will be working hand in hand with Modishana. She is in charge of the detectives and visible policing in the district.
Challenges
Modishana intends to use all available resources to ensure the safety of the communities in his area. "We have to ensure that our community feels and are safe," he said.
He said challenges that he will be focusing on in the area are sexual offence crimes, gender-based violence (GBV), murder and stock theft.
"Women are being assaulted by people they trust and know. Mostly it happens at home and it's frustrating to see a victim assaulted by someone related to them. GBV is a huge challenge," he said.
"Even if we maintain visibility in the area, these crimes mostly happen inside homes. We are however making major break-throughs in terms of our detectives who are investigating the cases to ensure that there are arrests and successful prosecutions."
Admittedly, a big challenge for him will be to rebuild the community's confidence in the police as frustrated victims of crime tend to take the law into their own hands.
"We need to deal with crime correctly and improve service delivery. If we don't, we will lose the confidence of our community. There is a lack of confidence in the police, but we ask residents not to take the law into their own hands.
"I plead with them to give the police a chance to deal with crime in the correct manner," he said.
Photo: Kristy Kolberg
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