CPF’s bid to fight crime
PILOT PROJECT: Pastor Charles George
A Delft community leader has taken it upon himself to help fight crime in the gang-riddled area, by setting up a camera network to keep an eye on skelms.
Pastor Charles George, 55, is at the helm of the Delft Community Policing Forum, and says crime has gone down since they installed the cameras five months ago.
George doesn’t live in Delft, but has a church in the area and says technology is the way forward to deal with crime.
In February, George used money from his church to purchase two 4G CCTV cameras at a cost of R3000 each: “They were shipped from abroad and are solar-powered, so it’s not dependent on Eskom which fails us dismally.”
The cameras store both sound and video footage from its surroundings.
They stand about 15 metres high in the church yard and George says they have already assisted in catching criminals in the area.
“We caught one guy doing graffiti on our building. We (the CPF) then went to his parents and told them they needed to repaint the wall or else he (the suspect) would be arrested. They painted the wall,” says George.
The forum has also invested in a drone which they bought for R 6 500 - however they are not able to use this just yet due to the legalities involved.
“There is a lot of red tape surrounding the use of the drone,” says George.
“We need technology to be the first respondent in an emergency. This way we remove the human element and risk of a member getting hurt.”
Recent crime statistics revealed by Police Minister Bheki Cele showed Delft replacing Nyanga as the country’s murder capital.
Of the country’s 21 325 murders that were recorded between 1 April 2019 to 31 March 2020, Delft had 256 cases, followed by Khayelitsha with 251 cases.
The motivated community leader says he plans to expand on his CCTV pilot project, “until every household has surveillance in the near future”.