Reiger Park police in Boksburg were out in numbers to disperse a crowd of looters when they targeted a truck on Tuesday. While looters say they are doing it in protest of their electricity connections being cut, police say similar instances of looting have been happening long before the issue of disconnected illegal power connections came into play.

Wit Deep Road crosses through Delmore Park, Ulana and Angelo informal settlements. Looting in the area is a daily occurrence. Reiger Park SAPS station commander Lieutenant Colonel Eugene Roets says criminals pretend to be protesters.

“We deal with lootings daily. People in those areas are saying the crimes happen because they have a power crisis because their illegal connections were disconnected by the Ekurhuleni energy department. But we have been dealing with these criminal acts long before their illegal connections were disconnected.”

“These criminals normally barricade the road with stones and then target trucks that are carrying valuable goods. We advise truck drivers to avoid the Wit Deep Road.

“The trucks are normally attacked in the mornings and hardly at night. We plan to meet with other law enforcement agencies the crisis on the road. We are all going to interact and come up with precise preventative solutions for criminal activities on the road.

Roets says that the high levels of crime on Wit Deep Road is making his job difficult because large numbers of police officers have to be dispatched to stop the looting, compromising the station.