Reza Patel has 14 years of CPF experience

BCT: Tell us about yourself.

RP: I’m unmarried; I was born in Durban, but grew up in Ladysmith.

I moved to Actonville with my mother, Khyroonisa, late father Hajee Mia – and siblings Dilshad Ally, Mumtaz Bhamjee, Abdul Samad and my late brother, Salim Patel, in 1979; and completed my schooling career at William Hills High School in 1985.

I moved to Mackenzie Park in 1990.

BCT: Why did you join the Community Policing Forum (CPF)?

RP: I owned a night club called Razzmatazz, in Hillbrow in 1991.

I saw how people threw their lives away, because of alcohol abuse and so on.

One day, the club was robbed and the thieves shot at me, but missed.

There was a hole in a wall however; and I couldn’t understand how the bullet missed me.

I then decided to leave the night club scene and, several months later – in 1993, I got a job in Johannesburg at First Bowring and Associates.

I started a new job at Sanlam at the end of 1993, before opening my own financial service provider in 2008, called Capital Sense.

I was invited to a CPF meeting in Apex in 2002 and, to cut a long story short, joined the committee of the CPF as the chairperson of Sector Six.

I became the Benoni CPF chairperson in 2005.

I was elected as the executive chairperson for the Ekurhuleni Central Cluster CPF, where I oversee 11 police stations, in 2015.

BCT: What ideas do you have to help the community?

RP: The Crime Air Network (Can) is a platform for entities fighting crime to communicate, but we hope to have an Integrated Emergency Response (IER) – where civilians can contact emergency numbers on one platform. But those contact details will be disclosed at a later stage.

BCT: What other activities are you involved in?

RP: I established the Civilian Crime Intelligence Network in 2014 – where several entities can reach targeted audiences, so if we need information broadcast about security, we approach a qualified security company to issue warnings to the communities.

BCT: What are your dreams and hobbies?

RP: I enjoy reading and travelling.

At some stage I would like to travel around the world to understand how other countries deal with crime, so that I can revert to South Africa for our benefit against crime.

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