Durban – Massive discrepancies and inexplicable data entries have been detected in the SAPS’ annual crime statistics, which showed some KwaZulu-Natal police stations with a 100 percent drop in crime and other areas – not known for crime – had spikes of up to 6 000 percent.
Five days after the crime statistics were released, the inaccurate data remained on the SAPS website.
They show that numerous KZN police stations appeared to have won the war on crime while others were failing hopelessly.
The Daily News has sifted through dozens of entries posted by the SAPS for various suburbs and has picked up some startling statistics that the police top brass have yet to explain.
For example, Westville police station had opened a remarkable 192 cases of stock theft compared to nil in the past nine years. The station had also managed to cut down robbery with aggravating circumstances from 219 to just 41 in one year; house robberies from 102 to 21; house burglaries from 769 to 150 and theft of, or from, motor vehicles from 108 to just 4.
Remarkably, for an area that has three major shopping centres in its patrol area, including the Pavilion, one of the province’s biggest, in its patrol area, shoplifting had dropped from a high of 524 in 2005 to just one case over the past year.
