{"id":134184,"date":"2016-09-28T13:20:00","date_gmt":"2016-09-28T11:20:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/germistoncitynews.co.za\/134184\/criminals-are-taking-away-our-freedom\/"},"modified":"2016-09-28T09:46:00","modified_gmt":"2016-09-28T07:46:00","slug":"criminals-are-taking-away-our-freedom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/germiston-city-news\/opinion-edition\/2016\/09\/28\/criminals-are-taking-away-our-freedom\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Criminals are taking away our freedom\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Bongi Mpembe, Simmerfield writes:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I am sitting in my lounge forced to listen to the sound of cars passing by because I have no TV.<\/p><div class=\"stream-item stream-item-in-post stream-item-inline-post aligncenter\"><\/div>\n<p>Someone didn\u2019t only steal it along my with my other assets, they took a little bit of freedom with it and definitely my security.<\/p>\n<p>In a space of a week I had people break in and take my possessions, try to come back in the early hours of the morning and then come back again for the copper pipes a week later.<\/p><div class=\"stream-item stream-item-in-post stream-item-inline-post aligncenter\"><\/div>\n<p>Every month without fail thousands are deducted off my salary to contribute towards tax and when I need that money to work for me the most; it doesn\u2019t.<\/p>\n<p>The police take more than two hours to attend to you because as I was told there is no manpower.<\/p>\n<p>Only one car is allocated for Sector Three.<\/p>\n<p>As for the people who stand at the corner \u201clooking for a job\u201d nothing can be done.<\/p>\n<p>Loitering is not an offence.<\/p>\n<p>While I pay to stay in my house that I am now afraid to be in.<\/p>\n<p>They freely enjoy sitting at the stop sign watching you go in and out and with whom.<\/p>\n<p>Between the burglar door, electric wires and so forth we are almost guaranteed death should there be a fire.<\/p>\n<p>I wish we had a justice system that didn\u2019t favour the rich and criminals.<\/p>\n<p>Where there\u2019s an actual investigation and people get punished and are afraid to go to jail.<\/p>\n<p>I wish to stay in a South Africa with less crime; where my life matters and I\u2019m not just a case number.<\/p>\n<p>Where I am free to come and go as I please and not be afraid to come back home in case the criminals are waiting for me.<\/p>\n<div class=\"stream-item stream-item-below-post-content\">\n<div class='tenancy_slot tenancy_slot_1 jannah_ad' style='display: none;' data-query-id='629e7b6c20da227b0bdb33e3b60c0fe3'><\/div>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Simmerfield resident is afraid after housebreaking.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1848,"featured_media":134506,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"hasGravity":false,"cxt_article_byline":"","cxt_disable_google_ads":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,6],"tags":[989,979,969,1208,2734,1167,1115],"class_list":["post-134184","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-letters","category-opinion-edition","tag-crime","tag-germiston","tag-germiston-city-news","tag-letter","tag-melissa-hart","tag-opinion-2","tag-simmerfield"],"amp_enabled":true,"category_labels":{"Category":"Opinion","SubCategory":"Letters"},"tag_labels":["crime","germiston","germiston city news","letter","melissa hart","opinion","simmerfield"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/germiston-city-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134184","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/germiston-city-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/germiston-city-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/germiston-city-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1848"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/germiston-city-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=134184"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/germiston-city-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134184\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/germiston-city-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/134506"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/germiston-city-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=134184"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/germiston-city-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=134184"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/germiston-city-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=134184"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}