Police Militarisation and the War on Crime in South Africa

[davidbfpo]

A Kings War Studies podcast (43 mins) last month and just caught up with. Their summary:

Join Guy Lamb, Director of the Safety and Violence Initiative (University of Cape Town), discusses his latest research on the globally pressing issue of police militarisation and the ‘war on crime’, drawing on the experiences of South Africa.

Link:https://soundcloud.com/warstudies/ev...es/sets/events

The speaker provides an overview of this trend around the world and halfway through returns to South Africa, in particular suburbs around Cape Town. Sad to hear how one police officer about to retire needed cash, so he sold 2.5k firearms to one of the biggest gangs. It is noteworthy that the speaker concludes in some high crime and high violence areas militarised policing is a valid approach - though it must be within a strategy to drive down the determinants of crime.

One snag with the podcast there are references to displayed slides.