Selma Ikela
Windhoek-City Police are ready to redeploy speed detection instruments along Windhoek roads following recent approval by the Namibian Standards Institution (NSI).
This comes after the use of the equipment was suspended last year in June and could thus not be used as evidence in the courts of law. The equipment had been in use for almost five years before the suspension.
The instrument the City Police employs is laser-based technology to detect speed.
In this instance, City Police Senior Superintendent Adam Eiseb told the media that they have approval for the safety cam from NSI whereby they are using two types – the laser and the radar equipment.
He explained that the laser-based equipment needs human intervention to capture; hence, it needs an operator and every time the operator picks up he/she activates the instruments to lock the over-speeding vehicle.
He explained that the radar-operated camera is 100 percent independent of human intervention and is so advanced that it can capture five transgressions at the same time whether the vehicle is approaching or going in the opposite direction. Eiseb stated that the same goes for the laser equipment.
“I am pleased to announce that the process, in as far as some of this equipment is concerned, has been finalised and subsequently we received the type approval for the equipment referred to as the safety cam. We have the type approval certificate that actually authorises this equipment to be used for law enforcement purposes and as such can be presented as evidence in a court of law,” stated Eiseb.
Eiseb said the judiciary had questioned the credibility of the speed law equipment for the simple reason that the instruments were not type approved by the Namibian Standards Institution and it was mostly based on the South African Bureau of Standards.
“It was found not to be relevant to Namibia, and seeing that we have our own standards institute that was recently established, it needed to be type approved by our local institution,” he said, adding that all law enforcement [agents] using the equipment had to be suspended around June last year.
He said the other required documentation that should accompany the use of this equipment is the calibration certificate and the calibration process is repeated every six months to ensure the instruments are functioning 100 percent.
“And on top of that the operators (the officers), who are operating this instrument need the operator’s certificate, of which these certificates are in place. The officers are duly trained to operate these instruments and, therefore, knowledgeable as to how the instruments are used,” said the senior s
uperintendent.