The belief that police could single-handedly solve the murder rate in the country was “essentially a hallucination”‚ Police Minister Nathi Nhleko told Parliament while releasing the crime statistics this morning. Nhleko told the committee that in the past year‚ contact crimes such as murder‚ attempted murder and rape had increased by 0.9 percent. Contact-related crimes had increased by 1.9 percent.Property related crimes had decreased by 0.8 percent and other serious crime decreased by 2.2 percent.Overall‚ he said there had been a decrease in crimes against women and children‚ but this remained a problem.But he said crime‚ and particularly violent crime‚ was a social ill that would take more than the police alone to solve.“We continue to have violence as a feature of our social outlook as a South African society‚” he said.He said there was also a “causal link” between the commission of a crime and drug and alcohol abuse - despite police closing down 37‚979 illegal liquor premises and destroying 1.7 billion litres of alcohol.-RDM News Wire..