Grahamstown’s street lights are switched off at 5am every morning which means that during the darkness of early morning criminals have the advantage of prowling around in the dark until sunrise.
Grahamstown’s street lights are switched off at 5am every morning which means that during the darkness of early morning criminals have the advantage of prowling around in the dark until sunrise.
Kenny Knoetze, an armed response officer for Hi-Tec, confirmed that although crimes take place throughout the night they have found that there is an increase in alarms going off from 5 until 6am in the morning. "Sunday mornings from five until six o’clock are most common for break-ins as they know that people are unlikely to wake up early," Knoetze warns.
The main crime that has established itself is petty theft. As Knoetze explains: "They usually break car windows to steal car radios or break into houses usually to steal jewellery, laptops and cellphones." He says that last year approximately 400 laptops were stolen and over the course of this year this number has increased. Hi-Tec has also found an increase in crimes committed through people being followed home. Spokesperson for the South African Police Service (SAPS), Captain Ndivhelafhi Mamuthubi, affirmed Knoetze’s statements. "This year there has been an increase in assault, motor vehicle break-ins, burglaries, common robberies and even armed robberies where the criminals can get their hands on firearms and weapons."
Knoetze said that the town centre is a crime hotspot but targeted crime areas tend to shift every one to two months. Mamuthubi said that High Street, New Street and African Streets are popular crime areas where police are being extra vigilant.
During the course of this year, a resident who lives in a house just off African Street, Xanthe Jackson had her car’s back windowscreen and a side window smashed in the early hours of the morning. An attempted robbery and a robbery happened only a few weeks later. Both incidents occurred at exactly 6am in the morning. "He picked both of the locks on the security gates of the front and back doors but only managed to get through the front door and I woke up when he opened my bedroom door, he told me he wanted my cellphone and after picking it up he ran out of the house," Jackson said. She praised Hi-Tec’s quick response and assistance in all of the robberies. Another house on African Street was also burgled at 6am. "They bent the burglar bars and climbed into our house and took my laptop and cellphone from my room at about six o’clock while I was sleeping," resident Danielle Bowler said. "About two weeks later between five and six o’clock in the morning, they smashed the small triangle back window of a Toyota Tazz in our property, rolled down the window and took the whole sound system from the car and the clothes off our washing line," said Jessica Lucas, who also lives at the same address.
Both Hi-Tec and the SAPS have plans in place to further tighten their security measures and warn the public to be vigilant.
