Police address plague of robberies in Jukulyn
Residents raised their concerns regarding the high rates of crime in Jukulyn affecting their livelihoods.
Deputy police minister Cassel Mathale has addressed Jukulyn residents in the north of Pretoria on the growing scourge of e-commerce and street robberies in the area.
Mathale met the residents in the Block X community hall on April 5 accompanied by senior police officials as part of a ministerial community imbizo.
The imbizo was attended by several government authorities and aimed to help residents find lasting solutions to crime in the area.
Tshwane district commissioner Brigadier Samuel Thine told the residents about what his office and the provincial offices were doing to fight crime in the community.
He said Operation Shanela has identified suspects in street and online robbers.
He said the team who were investigating the robberies consisted of Tshwane metro police (TMPD), SAPS crime intelligence, Tshwane rapid transit (TRT) and the public order police (POP). They followed up on information given to them by the community.
Thine said the initiatives established in June 2023 to fight online robbery were ongoing, and operations were yielding results.
“We managed to arrest 82 people who committed street as well as online robberies,” he said.
Thine said 22 taverns that operated without a licence has been closed down, and 42 stolen vehicles recovered.
“We received information between December and January about the young boys that were terrorising Jukulyn,” he said.
He said crime intelligence identified the group, and nine of them have since been arrested on charges ranging from possession of an unlicensed firearm and dangerous weapons to murder.
The residents aired their frustration regarding high crime, including an increase in murders and robberies, and a lack of job opportunities at the engagement.
They were further given the opportunity to voice their concerns about policing.
Maphuti Magatho said residents didn’t know where to look for help anymore because police were also criminals.
She said detectives take bribes from criminals to close the docket without investigating or lose the docket.
“We get threatened with guns every day, and we can’t do anything about it because these criminals are friends with police,” she said.
Another resident, Sello Mabika, raised concerns about another prevalent issue that locals struggle with: drugs.
He claimed that the drugs sold in the community are owned by someone who is in higher power.
“I am a father of four boys, and this issue of drugs saddens me because they kill our children,” he said.
Residents pleaded with Mathale to build them a new police station and give them resources for community patrols.
Head patrollers Thabo Mooketsi said that he didn’t believe police will make a difference “because all these problems have been ongoing for years”.
He said police threaten activists who fight crime in the community.
“We want to know if this visit is just a political campaign because elections are around the corner or if you are here to really fight crime,” he asked.
Mooketsi added that what police say, including the statistics that they bring to them, is completely different from their lived reality.
Mathale said the programme to recruit retired detectives to assist in the fight against crime in the area started last year.
He said a new police station for the area is on the cards but could not say when it would be built.
“I can’t say here that we don’t have elements within police who work with criminals, they are there and we arrest them when we find them within the system,” he said.
He said they would continue to fight crime in the area, regardless of election season.
Over the years, Jukulyn has been identified as a crime hotspot, with police currently investigating over 300 crimes in the area.
On January 29, a local woman was shot, and two children were wounded in a brazen house attack.
The woman was declared dead in hospital while the children are fighting for their lives.
Gauteng police spokesperson Colonel Dimakatso Nevhuhulwi said the family was attacked by two unknown people in their home in Soshanguve in the evening.
“The suspects fled the scene with their victims’ cellphones and vehicle, which was later found abandoned,” she said.
This incident left the community reeling with shock.
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