BULWER Community Improvement Project’s (BCIP) Heather Rorick is urging victims of crime to report incidents to the police.
Rorick said there had been many incidents where people were robbed and the Bulwer Ambassadors have come to the rescue and recovered their goods, but no cases were opened at the SAPS.
She said she and the Ambassadors had been threatened and Ambassadors were putting their lives on the line fighting crime.
“Our Ambassadors chase after bag snatchers and get knives pulled on them but the victims of the thieves won’t open cases. The Ambassadors are not armed, they are not security guards,” she said.
Rorick said recently Ambassadors were threatened by a man wielding a knife in Helen Joseph Road. According to Ambassador, Thobani Mkhize, the man was walking up the road playing with the knife and when Mkhize tried to stop him, the man tried to fight him.
“Metro Police were nearby and helped me, and we got the knife off the man,” he said.
Rorick said police told them to throw the knife away, but she didn’t want to throw it away, not knowing who would find it.
She said in another incident, a child was slapped by a woman in in a store and she had advised the child’s mother to open a case of assault against the woman.
“I ran after the woman who had slapped the child, assisted by the Ambassadors, but when we approached her she came at me with the jagged top end of a tin of bully beef she had been eating. By the time we got back to the store,, the woman had left and no case was opened,” she said.
“When people don’t open cases, it shows they do not support the work we are doing in the road. The Ambassadors feel disheartened as they put their lives on the line for nothing. People also tend to be rude to the Ambassadors, and we urge them to be civil, as they work in all kinds of weather and under difficult circumstances and need people’s support. This has got to stop – people need to report crime, even if they get their stolen items back,” she said.
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