Our secure gated community has had a few issues of late and the so called secure area was not that secure. You are only as strong as your weakest link and we have a few properties that form the boundary of the gated community that are very questionable. We reside in the island portion in the middle and our property is nowhere near the outer boundary.
There is very little one can do mainly if these houses do not have the money to up their security everyone else is affected. The solution is we all chip in and pay for these upgrades which is never going to happen with the mindset of the community and we even struggle to get every property to chip in to the monthly security costs let alone additional security for a house they do not own. The only way these properties will secure their own properties is when they are targeted by thieves and then they have no choice.
Roughly two weeks ago a few of us had a meeting with Fox Security and put together a plan that has been ongoing since then. We have a very good idea when this particular criminal is active between 12 and 3 am so it was only a matter of time before he was picked up. Last night an individual was arrested and there is no confirmation yet if this is the person we have been hunting. The individual needs to be arrested and charged first before any facial footage can be released as you are presumed innocent until proven otherwise even if you know they are guilty. I have my doubts this is the chap and the only was we will be sure whilst waiting for news from the security company is if there are no other burglaries in the meantime.
Security companies known as armed response have basically replaced the police in South Africa with private security companies now being 10 x bigger than the SA Police Force. The communities rely on private security companies to patrol and respond to any alarms or calls which they are on the scene within minutes. In our area we have maybe 4 active security companies and I have been trying to get the community to select one as we will bet better results having more security vehicles in our area from that service provider.
In South Africa if you are a citizen you have an identification card/book and that requires everyone being fingerprinted. This creates a massive data base for the police allowing them to match fingerprints with names from the crime scenes. This is one of the reasons why having millions of undocumented migrants in the country has helped spike crime as they are literally ghosts going undetected. Fingerprints not matching the database will then lead you to presume the crime was an undocumented foreigner.
I have not looked at the security group until a few minutes ago and another house had their beams activated last night. This was after the first person was arrested so this really does sound like the one we are after and the one arrested was just unlucky. There is no such thing as catching the wrong criminal because any criminal captured is a success.
Again though the biggest bugbear from all of this is we are informed the day after and not immediately when this happens. Imagine if a large number of people come out into the road we would be able to spot whoever is on the loose rather quickly. There are around three of us who will go on immediate patrol and have a plan to catch this person by monitoring the exterior of the community looking for movement. Last night we would have had two bites of the cherry and we cannot keep tossing away these opportunities.
Posted Using INLEO
