Operation Thunder commenced on the 11th of May 2018. It involved the deployment of 267 personnel from the Public Order Policing environments nationally to nine identified stations in the Western Cape, as follows: Mitchell’s Plain, Steenberg, Manenberg, Philippi, Bishop Lavis, Worcester, Ravensmead, Elsies River and Philippi East (as of 20 June 2018).
This operation has, at its core, a geographical and targeted approach focussing on dominating specific hotspot areas and identified individuals. We have strategically erected three base camps in Lavender Hill in Steenberg, Uitsig in Ravensmead and Philippi East (Stock Road).
The purpose of the base camps is to ensure an operational presence 24/7 in the specific identified hotspots to create an operational hub and to integrate operational forces including Metro Police, Traffic and Law Enforcement agencies.
The objective of the base camps are the managing of deployment, ensuring rapid response to incidents, securing of crime scenes, ensuring command and control and monitoring of performance targets.
The base camps resulted in improving relationships with communities, allowing information to be volunteered by community members, creating conditions where community members are more comfortable to report crime, and further enhancing perceptions of safety in identified hotspot areas.
Operation Thunder also provides an alternative physical presence (in hot spot areas) in the station precincts. This results in the creation of a force multiplier.
The total arrests related to the Operation Thunder activities made from the 1st of April 2018 to the 30th of June 2018, in the category of all crimes, were 91 114 arrests and in the 17 community reported crimes category, 33 140 arrests.
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