Whilst local police claim to be patrolling the streets of Laudium and profess to be protecting and serving the community, acts of crime continue in the area, leaving residents feeling increasingly unsafe.
Surprisingly, thieves, are even freely moving around during the dark hours of the night, with neither police nor private security patrollers spotting them. Even petty criminals, who are believed to be mostly nyaopes, who walk the streets of Laudium in a ‘dazed’ mood due to drugs, are easily moving around at night without being intercepted or questioned by police, as to their whereabouts.
In yet more incidents of petty thefts reported to the Laudium Sun recently, another two residents have complained about the theft of their solar outdoor light fittings. In one of the incidents, all seemed fine for a Mendhi Street family when they went to bed on Thursday night, however it was only the next morning that they realized that the solar spotlight in their yard had been stolen during the night whilst they were asleep.
Darie Chainsamy of Mendhi Str, explained further to the Laudium Sun, “It was only when we woke up the next morning, ready to go to work, that we realized our outside lights were missing. We did not hear anything strange that night and could not understand how the thieves managed to jump over our security gate and steal the lights that were mounted quite high. My son and I then checked out our CCTV footage. That it is when we saw that two guys entered our property in the early hours of the morning at around 4am. The first guy who jumped into my yard is known to me, as Rasta. His accomplice appeared about 10 minutes later on camera and was spotted jumping into my neighbour’s yard, also stealing their solar light. I had to replace the solar lights because of the frequent loadshedding. We cannot afford to let our yard be in total darkness. Although I opened a charge, the police did not trace Rasta. A few days later, as I went down into White Blocks, I spotted Rasta, who was busy doing some work for someone on Umber Street and I had to call the police to arrest him.”
The Laudium Sun also spoke to another neighbor, Ahmed Sabir Mahomed of Mendhi Street, who said, “The crime around our area is becoming a big problem. Besides the stealing of light fittings from the yards, of two of my neighbors, we are having a lot of problems. If it is not the break-in into houses, then it is constant hearing of gunshots. We are living like prisoners in our own homes. We hardly see the Laudium police patrolling our streets. They are certainly not doing their job of protecting the community, as the crime levels are increasing by the day in Laudium.”
Sgt Simon Chokoe confirmed that a suspect was arrested after being caught on CCTV footage, stealing the lights and was let out on bail.
