South African Police Service (SAPS) Public Order Police members from headquarter-15 will be deployed to Paris, France. The police members will be deployed to perform policing duties at the 2024 Olympic Games from July 26, 2024 to August 11, 2024.
Reportedly, the South African Police Service is the only law enforcement agency from the Southern African Development Community (SADC) region, while participating in the skills sharing opportunity, which is related to crowd management control.
As per the sources, the selected team consists of seven females and eight males, each with more than 10 years of experience in the Public Order Police environment.
However, their duties in France will majorly include managing the crowd in various areas, along with patrolling the public roads around the Olympic venues.
Moreover, the duties will also include providing information to the visitors. It will also consider patrolling public transport hubs such as train stations, metro stations, bus stations and venues that are frequently used by the spectators.
The duties have been assigned to support the police stations and mobile reception points i.e. VOC by welcoming the visitors. In their duty, facilitating procedures in the victim statement will also be considered.
Providing translation assistance to French police and investigators will also be considered among the duty roles.
Following this a send-off meeting was held yesterday with the National Commissioner – General Fannie Masemola, where all fifteen (15) POP members will be flying from OR Tambo today.
2024 Paris Olympics is an ongoing international multi-sport event which is scheduled to take place from July 26, 2024 to August 11, 2024 in France. Paris will be the main host city for the Summer Olympics, considering the events that will held at 16 other cities, which are spread across Metropolitan France, along with one subsite in Tahiti, French Polynesia.
To make it a complete entertainment, Paris Olympics 2024 will feature the debut of break-dancing as an Olympic event and will be the final Olympic Games which will held during the IOC presidency of Thomas Bach. Also, the 2024 games are expected to cost around €9 billion.