SOUTH African police officers and management will receive extensive retraining after the new national budget is approved in April next year. Meanwhile, police stations throughout the country will continue with their current training courses as usual.
SOUTH African police officers and management will receive extensive retraining after the new national budget is approved in April next year. Meanwhile, police stations throughout the country will continue with their current training courses as usual.
According to police spokesperson Inspector Milanda Coetzer, “The new training programmes will not replace the already existing training courses, but will enhance them.” This year, the Grahamstown SAPS has been involved in various training courses that aim to train the course facilitators so that they can start their own training courses. The ‘train the trainers’ courses include domestic violence, missing person, sector policing and crime scene management.
Besides these trainer courses, the Grahamstown SAPS has also been running firearms training courses, accident reporting, community service (front desk) and pepper-spray training programmes. A computer training course prepares the trainees to work with the general crime system and the circulation system, which monitors stolen property countrywide. In-service training, which includes police telephone etiquette and police administration, as well as volunteer training are also part of the curriculum.
“The training programmes are an on-going process,” said Inspector Tim Hackart, who is in charge of the physical skills and practical training courses. According to him, there is a course on firearms usage every three months and in the first half of every year, courses are presented which aim to prepare the trainees for the annual National Arts Festival.
The courses vary in size depending on the resources available. “We are limited in terms of our budget,” said Coetzer. According to her, the Grahamstown SAPS is in charge of training not only their own members, but also police officers from Alicedale, Port Alfred, Riebeeck-East, Peddie and other smaller towns. In total the Grahamstown SAPS is in charge of training 26 stations in the area. The co-ordination of these training courses takes place at monthly training meetings where the needs of the clusters are discussed and the year’s plan is reassessed.
Members of the Grahamstown SAPS also participate in national training programmes. According to Coetzer, from January this year up until recently, various station commissioners from the Eastern Cape, including the Grahamstown station commissioner, were away at a course which focused on staff management, planning and executing crime-fighting operations and implementing crime-prevention methods.
For next year’s training programmes, it is expected that the new budget will aim to address the 2010 World Cup needs. “We expect that next year’s budget will include training courses on crowd control and the like in preparation for the big up-coming events,” added Coetzer. It is expected that members of the SAPS from smaller cities and towns could be relocated temporarily for the events.
