Safety In The City

Crime is a constant issue in any metropolis. Luckily for us in the Mother City, there are dedicated people like Muneeb Hendricks who fight this scourge every day.

- Taryn Springhall

Muneeb “Mo” Hendricks works at a seemingly tireless pace to ensure that the central city stays safe for its residents and visitors.

As the Manager of Safety and Security at the Cape Town Central City Improvement District (CCID), he talks me through an average week of strategic and operational tactics, carried out with a full spectrum of partners and stakeholders to reduce crime in one of the most popular cities in the world.

He arrives a few minutes late for our interview because a student has come to the CCID Ops Centre to report an incident of harassment. Mo personally takes time to listen to her complaint and immediately contacts the right people to deal with the matter, before working out a different route for the young woman and getting one of his managers to escort her along the new route. Before the coffee arrives, her lecturer has mailed to thank him for the swift, proactive response to the problem.

Mo then goes on to outline how he starts every day: by catching up on what’s gone down in the CBD the night before and reviewing the information on their internal system. “If there are serious incidents, I plan time in my diary to personally contact those individuals or businesses,” he explains.

As part of the CCID’s mandate, Mo is continually looking at ways to leverage technology to improve their service. The CCID has implemented a system to electronically log every call, incident, report and complaint. That data is then plotted on a map of the CCID’s four precincts (which spans 1.6 square kilometres) to show where crimes occur. The system sends real-time alerts by way of SMS and email, and that information is communicated directly to officers on the ground.