City of Cape Town considers night vision goggles to catch criminals

The City of Cape Town is considering giving neighbourhood watches (NHWs) night vision goggles to help curb crime and home invasions, the City’s executive director for safety and security confirmed on Tuesday.

“Ward allocations have been made available for this,” Richard Bosman said in reply to questions submitted by News24.

“However, we are still researching the technology and at this time it is under consideration.

“None of the NHWs have been issued with the equipment.”

The plan was mentioned in a neighbourhood watch feedback presentation by three ward councillors and the City’s mayoral committee member for safety and security, JP Smith, in Table View on Monday night.

Councillors Joy McCarthy, Nora Grose and Nicky Rheeder were describing a wide range of programmes in their wards, which include the suburbs of Table View, Bloubergstrand, Parklands, Sunningdale and Melkbosstrand.

On Tuesday, McCarthy told News24 she had set aside R100 000 from her ward allocation budget in the hopes of getting two pairs of night vision goggles to be used to prevent crime.

She gave as an example the houses in Flamingo Vlei, which are set amid a vast nature reserve in the area.

The night vision goggles could be used by the 1 200-strong NHW whose members patrol the suburb every night.

McCarthy said they could be used to see people hiding in the bushy vlei reserve area at night.

She added the NHWs have helped a lot to keep suburbs safer, given the ongoing battle to get extra police officers for the Western Cape.

The councillors have also been allocated budgets for cameras in their areas.

These were in addition to the other programmes in the wards, which ranged from providing extra lighting, to infrastructure maintenance.

There was also a plan to introduce drones to help with security in Melkbosstrand, according to Grose, but licence training was still under way for that.

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