Over the past few weeks there has been a dramatic series of arrests as police round up gangs of robbers, and this is accompanied by an equally dramatic fall in the number of reports of armed robberies.
The reasons for this burst of success must be many, but two seem to be critical: the growing professionalism of the Zimbabwe Republic Police and the accompanying major improvement in the relations between police and public.
In their statements reporting the successful winding up of the robbery gangs, the police have been very careful to thank the public for the information they are now passing on to the police, and the hotline numbers are always listed in these statements, and the reports on the arrests usually start with the phrase: “Acting on information received, a team of detectives . . .”
While people need to take sensible precautions to avoid being victims of armed robbery, starting with the excellent police advice to keep their money in bank rather than a cupboard or a trunk or even a safe, the biggest single deterrent against robbery is a very high risk of being arrested and then spending a lot of years behind bars.
In simpler times this is what kept Zimbabwe’s robbery rate low. The graph of reported robberies would be on zero, then climb as a new gang started operations then drop again as the gang was rounded up.
Sometimes the graph would show two steps as two gangs went to work, then two steps down to zero again as the police rounded them up.
This level of resource deployment and professionalism was maintained in the case of murder. Zimbabwe has very few murders largely because the odds of escaping are minute. We have very few unsolved murders.
The statistics tend to get muddied a bit as every killing starts off as a murder investigation and the perpetrator is arrested and initially remanded on murder charges.
In many cases, as investigation proceed and more facts are put together it becomes apparent that there was no intention to kill, but that someone drunk or high on drugs or just in a filthy temper lashed out and the assault proved fatal. The perpetrator still goes to jail, but now on culpable homicide charges.
For robberies, life became more complex and more people decided to try a life of violent crime, and the number of robberies grew and Zimbabwe was in very real danger of becoming a serious crime centre, as has happened in some other countries.
Fortunately, enough police skills existed that at least held the line, while improvements and training were built up.
A major factor was from the start of the Second Republic and a new team at the top, the police started rebuilding their relationship with the people and rebuilding the mutual trust that must exist.
This took many forms, including reigning in or arresting rogue police, a small minority who had done so much damage.
Now every Zimbabwean knows that if a police officer seeks a bribe or attempts extortion, there are numbers to phone, places to go and action will follow. This allows the vast majority of police officers, whose profession was being tainted, to blossom.
Generally speaking, most people are honest, so they will take the trouble to pass on information concerning crime so long as they know that they will be taken seriously.
And when you get an honest majority of the population and an honest majority of the police force on the same side, the minority of criminals are in trouble.
This growing trust needs to expand into other areas. There are two major sources of related under-reported crime, gender-based violence and its most extreme form, rape.
Many who are victims of these crimes do not make reports. Often they are frightened the aggressor will retaliate in an even worse way, often they are worried what people will think, and sometimes they are worried that the police will not take them seriously.
As we saw during the seminars and workshops during the 16 days of activism against gender-based violence this month, the police are now trained and ready to help, and the specially trained officers, who are mostly women officers, are deployed at all police stations ready to listen, ready to help and then ready to take action.
Most of the time the person committing the assault is known to the victim, and in fact is often related to the victim. So there is not much detective work involved.
The name and address are known, but what is needed is then effective action. Those who have decided to trust the police have been in many cases surprised at just how effective that trust has proved to be.
This is the sort of win-win we can get with efficient police and trust between police and public.
Zimbabwe now faces a serious drug menace, and that must help fuel those culpable homicide unintentional killings.
The police, as professionals, see their main job as interdicting the supply chain, that is going after the suppliers and peddlers, and just fining and counselling the users. This requires good co-operation between police and public, that is people ready to go to the police and say that a particular person they know is selling drugs.
The build-up in convictions is starting to show that once again we have that police and public trust. With that we can win the battles against violent crime, against corruption, against gender-based violence, against drugs.
Without it the police are working in a sea of distrust and the people are helpless. But once people of goodwill combine, victories are possible, as we are now seeing.
