Cape Town's crimefighter, JP Smith, on the court battle that could reshape SA policing

JP Smith has spent years being told his city is one of the world's most violent. He didn't dispute it. He explained why. Nearly every gun his officers pulled off the street came back to bite them: nineteen times out of twenty, the man caught red-handed walked free, because Cape Town cannot investigate its own arrests. That fight over investigative powers, now heading to court against national government, ran alongside almost everything else that landed on his desk this fortnight: a pet bylaw row that briefly convinced half the city it was about to be taxed for owning a cat, a cabinet minister repeating a gangster's phone call on camera, a R3 billion construction site with a 28s gang boss's family on the books, and a straight answer to the question everyone keeps asking him: would he help Helen Zille fix Johannesburg. Alec Hogg sat down with the MMC for safety and security to get all of it on the record.