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T: 011 894 2814/5 24 hours 7 days a week we are here. 24 November 2017
The Consequence of Crime
BY PHILIP ALLEBONE
On the evening of the 20th of November I attended a Prayer Service for two people who had been victims of a crime. The crime had happened the Saturday before in what was apparently a house robbery but devolved into the shooting of both the people in the house. One person died and the other critical in hospital. The suspects shot at security as they responded to the scene and fled into the night, leaving a great many questions and, at this stage, no real answers. It was the prayer service, however, that made me think more than the crime itself. Perhaps we are inured to crime, or that it is so shocking that we don’t really let it touch us, but the service, as small and personal as it was, had a great impact on me as to the realities of
crime. I stood by the group that gathered and listened as they talked, as the priest and the dominee prayed, and I realised that the effect of the crime was a deep and communal thing. The shock on the faces of those that heard the shots, or who had been to the scene, was palpable, and it was clear that the crime was not only committed against the two that were the targets of the crime, but also against the neighbours and the community. People lost friends, felt the fear, and suffered as a result of this, and still suffer yet. It was in this moment that I realised that we, as community, need to stand together as community, to make ourselves strong and to be a people, in the old understanding of the word, instead of just what
we are, which in most cases is actually a group of individuals. The horror of crime is not so much what it does to the dead, but to the living, and we need, deeply and in a meaningful and powerful way, to build community and to make it work. There are people in most areas that do try to make this happen, and truth be told I myself am part of doing such things, but I have to say that it has never been demonstrated so powerfully as it was standing outside the home of a murdered woman and seeing the candles burn, hearing people talk and realising that this is the very thing that should drive us to outrage, not fear or sorrow, and we should stand together to help each other to make our homes safe again.
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BY PHILIP ALLEBONE
The first fourteen days of November alone saw no less than seven Armed Robberies reported to CMS in the areas. This is a large number and we likely can expect it to get worse, but one thing that seems to be an increasingly common factor in these robberies is the fact that they are not only armed but are in larger numbers. In certain areas it is clear that they are well prepared and even seem to be trained, judging by the strategy
Armed and in Numbers that they are using. This being said it raises the risk to security that respond to the scene, and if they respond unaware of the severity of the situation it can lead to injuries or even death. In a couple of incidents over the past few months it was clear that they were in fact awaiting the arrival of the security and had planned with the
intention of ambushing them as they arrived. The more warning and information that might be obtained prior to responding can be critical to the security responding, and especially businesses should look carefully at the security that they have in place to minimize the risks and maximize the safety for their staff and for the responding security.