POLICE and Nelson Mandela Bay’s municipal security services will again be clamping down on illegal card guards operating around the city, officials said yesterday.

This comes after a decision was taken in December which the municipality claims was to adopt a “low profile policy in terms of prosecutions against car guards”.

Beachfront safety and security forum committee member and ward councillor Stanford Slabbert said the municipality recently decided to scrap this policy after complaints from councillors and residents.

“This will empower the police and security officials to once again tighten up on car guards operating illegally in the Nelson Mandela Bay area,” Slabbert said. “One of the main problems highlighted was the beachfront area as illegal car guards seem to migrate that way.”

Slabbert said, in a meeting earlier this week, police and city security officials had announced plans to join forces and “clean up the area”.

“This is not a new problem and we need swift action to be taken before the World Cup as we are expecting an influx of illegal car guards all over the city,” he said.

The clampdown plan comes weeks after avid beachgoer and local resident Maureen Jordaan wrote a letter to the municipality telling how, after a walk on Kings Beach, she had almost been attacked by an aggressive “car guard”.

“How many of these self-appointed thugs are there, and what is being done to make the area safe for everybody to enjoy our beautiful beaches?” she asked.

Police spokesman Captain Sandra Janse van Rensburg said the joint operation was aimed at controlling and regulating the industry.

“This clampdown campaign is going to be launched in the beachfront area and hopefully rolled out throughout Port Elizabeth as problematic areas are identified,” she said. “We have received numerous complaints of car guards harassing motorists and are now going to be finding ways in which we can address this problem.”

Janse van Rensburg said police were starting a photographic database of illegal car guards, allowing them to be easily identified.

“(It) will allow us to identify who has been previously arrested and who is operating illegally in the area,” she said. “Our trend stats show when problematic illegal car guards operate in an area, crime increases but once they are arrested crime seems to drop.”

Janse van Rensburg stressed not all car guards were illegal and that some did abide by the law.

A senior police source, who did not want to be identified, said it was common knowledge among police that many illegal car guards played a role in both burglaries and theft out of motor vehicles.

“It is amazing, when there are these illegal car guards around crime seems to spike, but once we detain them and get them off the streets, crime drops.

Municipal spokesman Luncedo Njezula said the primary duties of car guards were to assist motorists and safeguard vehicles against break-ins and theft. He said the original reason for the policy being initiated last year was due to the large number of car guards operating illegally in the area.

“This decision was motivated by, in part, the realisation that there was a large number of car guards operating illegally in the Nelson Mandela Bay municipal area who did not even know what the correct procedure was, to become a legal car guard,” he said.

“Security services decided to embark on an educational and information drive to encourage illegal car guards to get the necessary training and security clearance so that they could be registered by the municipality as legal car guards.”

He said anyone wanting to operate as a legal car guard had to meet set requirements. These included having an E grade security certificate, being registered with PSIRA (the security regulatory body), having an ID and two ID photos, and a fee of R15 for registration. The guard would then be given an ID permit to operate in a designated area, Njezula said.