Seven arrested following free-for-all crime spree after Global Citizen festival
65 000 attended Global Citizen event at FNB Stadium.
It remains unclear how many people were actually mugged and harassed after Sunday’s Global Citizen event held at FNB Stadium. Many people took to Twitter to express their disgust and claimed that police weren’t visible outside the stadium after the event.
City of Joburg’s MMC for Public Safety, Michael Sun said the Johannesburg Metro Police Department deployed officers to manage traffic at the venue as this is the primary responsibility of the bureau.
Sun said there was a designated pickup point for Uber and Taxify where they could fetch people from. He said the Sasol garage is 1.4 km away from the stadium – “there’s individuals who requested Uber-not at the stadium, but at the garage”.
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“We need to ensure that going forward, we learn important lessons coming out of this huge event. We have to work closely as law enforcement divisions to ensure that the whole of Gauteng is fortified. We can confirm that our department made one arrest following what happened on Sunday,” said Sun.
JMPD Chief of Police, David Tembe said JMPD’s role at Global Citizen was to monitor and manage traffic during the event and to oversee that all points were carefully covered.
Tembe said JMPD had to superintend 43 points and 436 officers deployed on the strategic roads. He also stated that one of their roles includes clearing of any obstruction on the road if there’s one.
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Basically, JMPD held the media briefing to iron out the details of the Sasol garage muggings and what their role is as a state department.
“At the Sasol garage, we arrested seven foreign nationals between the ages of 21-35 in connection with the robberies such as taking people’s cellphones, muggings and other crimes.
“People went to this garage because that’s where Uber had to fetch them since the connection was bad next to the stadium. One of the cellphones was recovered and handed back to the owner. So it doesn’t mean that we only controlled traffic, we did actually make arrests,” said Tembe.
The South African Police Service has issued a statement requesting all victims of wrongdoing file a police report, which we strongly encourage. 3/3
— Global Citizen â• (@GlblCtzn) December 3, 2018
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