Jacobs was gunned down outside his Tafelsig house last Friday. He was the second neighbourhood watch member to be murdered in the area in just over a month.
In September, wheelchair-bound Vincent Naidoo was gunned down while he and members of a street committee guarded a fire on a street corner, barring access to “drug houses” in the area.
Michelle Gurling and Hassiem Jansen also received treatment for bullet wounds.
Western Cape Police Commissioner Mzwandile Petros, Community Safety MEC Lennit Max and Mitchells Plein police station commissioner Jeremy Vearey accompanied Mthethwa on the whistle-stop tour to Sandra Jacobs and Suleka Jansen’s homes.
Mthethwa told Jansen that it was people like her husband who were most important to the police.
“Just down the street, I’ve heard he helped to close down a drug outlet. This encourages us and we are proud of people like your husband,” he told her.
The police minister said drugs and gangs were “killing our nation”.
He asked Jansen to pass his regards onto her husband, who has recovered and returned to work.
At a press conference at the Mitchells Plein Police Station, the area’s community policing forum chairman Michael Jacobs gave a rousing speech in which he said Naidoo and Jacobs might have been killed, but gangsters had not broken the community’s spirit.
Addressing a room full of neighbourhood watch members, Mthethwa said the “shoot to kill” message had been dreamed up by the press and were not his words.
“Police must respond with fire to criminals. We make no response to that. Police are not trained to be trigger happy,” he said.
He said laws regarding police’s right to enter premises would be changed to save lives.
“There is a lot of woman and children abuse and we can’t seek permission from abusers to enter their houses,” he said.
Petros said he had seen policemen crying at murder scenes for their colleagues.
“When you speak, you speak like police like to kill people. When you kill someone, it lives on your conscience. Police do not take the decision to kill easily.”
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