The Cape Flats Safety Forum welcomed the big rollout of body and dashboard cameras for law enforcement officers in Cape Town.
The city unveiled its new cutting-edge crime-fighting technology in Goodwood on Wednesday.
About 800 law enforcement officers will be kitted out in body cameras and 300 cars will be fitted with dashboard cameras in a bid to fight crime in the metro.
The city said the dashcams would also have number plate recognition technology to alert officers to wanted vehicles and drivers with outstanding warrants of arrest.
However, the Cape Flats Safety Forum’s Lynn Philips said she hoped this was not an electioneering move by the Democratic Alliance (DA)-led city government.
“Elections are next year, [so] why wait so long when bodycams and dashcams were there for the past three years – that’s a question I’m asking myself.
“Is it a political game being played? I feel you can’t play politics with people’s livelihoods.”
Phillips said if the city was serious about combating crime, it needed to address some of the underlying factors contributing to crime.
“It’s no use if we’re going to focus on one aspect of crime when there are underlying factors as well: the social circumstances that our communities are facing, overcrowding, for instance, [and] poverty. Those are contributing factors towards crime.”