Community gets proactive in effort to ‘take-back’ the streets
The campaign was aimed at alerting the public to opportunistic crimes prevalent in the area
UNDER the theme, Take Back Our Streets, the Berea Sector 1 Community Policing Forum(CPF), together with Berea Police, security companies and block watch held a walk-about at Juniper Park on Friday.
The campaign was aimed at alerting the public to opportunistic crimes prevalent in the area and to also provide tips to the community on how they can help in the fight against crime.
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Addressing the community members in attendance, the Berea Sector 1 CPF vice chair, Manhar Parshotam said the group was targeting the area to remove vagrants, stop car-jacking and remove drugs.
“We are here today with everyone to work with the police and also introduce the community to our block watch program.”
“If we start small we can grow big and when the criminals know that the community is jacked up, they will go to other areas. We must assist the police in their crime prevention efforts. We cannot allow criminals to hold us to ransom in our neighborhoods, we have to take back our streets,” said Parshotam.
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Councillor Chris Pappas, who was joined by fellow Councillors Hassan Haniff and Martin Meyer, expressed gratitude to the Berea CPF for organizing the first of many foot patrols.
“Thank you also to metro police, SAPS, the security companies, and fellow councillors and of course all the residents, for coming out tonight,” he said, adding a special thanks to Niel and Sarah Cassim for their help with the streetlight patrol.
