Another midnight raid targets Amanzimtoti vagrants

The Community Crime Prevention Organisation (CCPO) in a joint operation with Toti SAPS once again cleaned up some of the areas where vagrants are sleeping in the early hours of Thursday, 24 August.

“We started at midnight in a bid to clean-up the area, as this problem seems to be getting worse, with more and more vagrants coming into the area and with it street robberies, drug sales, housebreaking and so on,” said CCPO committee member, George Snodey.

With SAPS members, Henk de Bruin and Steven Wylie, the CCPO visited areas they had already cleared out to see if the vagrants had returned.

With CCPO’s senior supervisor, Rupert Smit in tow, they started at Winkle Beach.
“In the southern parking lot they were not in their usual place, which seems to be deserted now, but we did locate three of them in another bush near the stairway to Middleton Road.”

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They were loaded into a van and the area cleaned up.

From there the search moved to the vicinity of Warnadoone Ski Boat Club. “There were signs of people having been in there, as there was a fireplace, but there were no signs of anyone living there.”

From there the group went to Topham Road, but those vagrants also seemed to have moved on. Then it was off to the dunes in front of the old Doonside Bowling Club, but that too was clean of vagrants.

In the CBD there were at least 10 vagrants sitting around, preparing to set up camp. A prostitute who had been under surveillance for the evening was apprehended and the vagrants were cleared out.

Then it was onto Roslyn Road, where another three were found sleeping. They were loaded up and the area cleaned up.

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Finally the group moved to the dilapidated building opposite Stella Maris flats in Beach Road, where another five were found in various parts of the building. They were loaded up and taken to Toti police station where they were charged.

“A packet containing 10 whoonga tablets was found in this den, which proves what we keep saying – the drug dealers are hiding among these guys.

With the help of Toti SAPS we will continue to try and clean up our beautiful town. It won’t happen overnight and with these vagrants continually changing areas, it is difficult to control at the best of times, but we are determined to keep up the pressure on these people contravening the bylaws.

We will not allow Toti to become another Hillbrow where businesses move out because of these vagrants and crime,” said Snodey.