On Sunday July 26, 2015 Dawncliffe Westville Community Watch received a call from one of the neighbouring watch, asking for assistance. One of the residents had called in that they had two suspects in their premises and one was definitely armed with a firearm.
Both neighbourhood watches sent out volunteers in numbers and patrollers also called in SAPS and Metro police who were both outstanding.
Now the complainant in the matter says he does not want to make a statement and open a case!
What this complainant has done jeopardizes a number of things:
- Suspects are armed, without him opening a case, law enforcement may not deploy their canine unit due to liability that may arise. Dogs may easily have found the suspects.
- Put volunteers and officers at risk as they cannot deploy the necessary assets like the canine unit.
- By not reporting the matter it does not get entered into the SAPS computer which puts out the crimes trends. This is used for SAPS crime prevention planning.
- Station strength is based on reported crime, station cannot apply for extra resources if crime stats cannot warrant it.
Please follow through when reporting a matter, if you don’t, law enforcement and volunteers will be reluctant to come to your assistance.
By not reporting a crime, it never happened. It is important to report each and every incident, otherwise we are in effect condoning the crime.
Source – Dawncliffe Westville Community
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