Randburg SAPS, Sector 2 (Bryanston) CPF recently sent out an appeal to residents to watch what they post on Facebook or WhatsApp groups.
According to SAPS, criminals don’t adhere to one SAPS sector or precinct. Criminals trawl Facebook groups or infiltrate WhatsApp groups and when their vehicle becomes too hot, they ditch it and investigators have to start building intelligence all over again.
Ideally, residents need to refrain from sharing any video or stills footage on their groups and must not post photos of vehicles on Facebook. Charnel Hattingh, national marketing and communications manager at Fidelity ADT, confirmed that while this is the way communities often prefer to support and alert one another, it can be a real problem and can result in strong cases being thrown out of court.
“The SAPS recommends if you have private or sensitive information, this must be passed on through the correct channels or through your local security provider who can work with the official teams,” said Hattingh.
Hattingh reminds residents that oversharing, in any form, can compromise your personal and home security, especially if it has to do with your location. “Criminals use social media to track people’s locations and find information they can use to their advantage. The internet and social media is a favoured playground of criminals and to believe otherwise is naïve,” she said.
“This is why it is so important for users to keep their personal routines and plans private and now even sensitive community crime information needs to be addressed sensitively. The right type of information landing in the wrong hands can have dire consequences.”
The other strong message this month relates to the importance of reporting all crime, and this includes attempted crime. “If a vehicle is flagged for example from one of our LPR cameras and there is a corresponding case number, we can stop that vehicle. Without a case number, there is technically no crime and therefore no arrests are possible,” she said.
“A crime stat is only a crime stat once it has been reported to SAPS,” she continued.
Hattingh said selective reporting of crime is problematic as it contributes to the dissemination of misinformation around crime, rather than accurate and contextualised information which the SAPS and private security companies can then work on to apprehend suspects.
“No matter how big or small or how insignificant you feel the crime is – report it!” concluded Hattingh.
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