COMMUNITY Crime Prevention Organisation Amanzimtoti’s (CCPO) George Snodey has stressed the importance of not allowing one’s dogs to just bark at everything and anything all day and all night.
This is after an incident on August 22, in Amanzimtoti, where a CCPO committee member heard his dogs bark just before 05:00, during a load-shedding power outage, which led to an arrest. If your dogs bark all the time and not just when there is an intruder, you won’t be made aware of intruders.
Also read: Parolee rearrested in Winklespruit for robbery
“Suspecting that something was up, Kyle Hutchinson had a look out of the window and noticed a person peeping over one of the neighbour’s walls. He called our supervisor, Michael Mkhize, who promptly arrived to confront the suspect near the park in Hartley Place. After some initial resistance and many stories, the suspect took us to some bushes where he had concealed some running shoes that he had stolen earlier in the morning. He then took us to a house in Highway Road where he had stolen the shoes from the verandah,” said Snodey.
The house’s residents were unaware that the shoes had been stolen, and one of them was taken to the police station where she opened a case. As the man was being processed, it was revealed that he was out on parole after he was convicted of housebreaking a few years ago.
“This man claimed that criminals from the Durban area are driving and dropping thieves here in the middle of the night to break in and steal valuables. That morning, he said four of them were dropped in the area and they then separated to look for easy targets. Once they have their loads, they stash them and then call their driver to pick them up,” said Snodey.
The Amanzimtoti area is considered a soft target by criminals, said Snodey, because it is a large area and it is not possible to make it safe enough because of a lack of resources.
“Let’s also remember that the prisons are about to release a few thousand criminals back into the streets on parole, who will be unemployed, hungry and desperate,” said Snodey.
In South Africa, a parolee must not commit an offence or they will be re-arrested to serve the rest of their sentence.
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