“Like many others, I am completely heartbroken to see the incredible suffering of residents in Cape Town, due to the surge in gang violence and turf wars that has taken 10 lives in just the past 10 days.” said Ralph Clark, CEO and President of SoundThinking. Data provided by Cape Town Metro’s recent deployment of gun acoustic technology has revealed that between the morning of Friday, October 13, and Sunday, October 15, no less than 251 gun incidents occurred across Nyanga, Manenberg, Hanover Park, and Lavender Hill, with 618 rounds fired in total. On the Saturday morning alone, there was a two-hour period in which 177 shots were fired.
The ability to exactly measure the scale of the violence in these four neighbourhoods is only made possible by the deployment of ShotSpotter, which is able to detect gunfire in near real time and then direct first responders to the precise location of the incident.