{"id":78159,"date":"2015-01-09T08:20:00","date_gmt":"2015-01-09T06:20:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/germistoncitynews.co.za\/78159\/festive-season-thieving\/"},"modified":"2015-01-09T08:54:01","modified_gmt":"2015-01-09T06:54:01","slug":"festive-season-thieving","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/germiston-city-news\/opinion-edition\/2015\/01\/09\/festive-season-thieving\/","title":{"rendered":"Festive season thieving"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Ernest Hall, Germiston South, writes:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Taking full advantage of, mostly, vacant offices this festive season, thieves have been having a field day at premises in Kinross Road, Germiston South.<\/p><div class=\"stream-item stream-item-in-post stream-item-inline-post aligncenter\"><\/div>\n<p>I have walked past these premises for the past 10 days and witnessed the methodical, systematic and relentless stripping of most things metallic surrounding this business.<\/p>\n<p>First one half of the vehicle entrance&#8217;s swing gates was removed from its hinges.<\/p><div class=\"stream-item stream-item-in-post stream-item-inline-post aligncenter\"><\/div>\n<p>Someone must have disturbed the thieves and the following day personnel placed said gate back on its hinges.<\/p>\n<p>A day later the thieves were back, this time successfully making off with that one section of gate.<\/p>\n<p>A day later, in broad daylight, they were back again, this time removing the metal railings on the brick walls and smashing a pillar in the process.<\/p>\n<p>We flagged down two very nice SAPS Task Team members and showed them what was happening and were informed that these officers would immediately visit the nearby scrapyards.<\/p>\n<p>Yeah! Right!<\/p>\n<p>As if that would help when almost everything was closed for the holidays.<\/p>\n<p>Also, we were given the Germiston South, sector-specific, policing unit&#8217;s contact number for further statements and appropriate investigation, etc.<\/p>\n<p>Within a short space of time two more very kind and decent officers arrived, looked, sympathetically listened and promised to take matters further.<\/p>\n<p>Since then we haven&#8217;t seen or heard anything from the SAPS and the thieves are back.<\/p>\n<p>Seemingly every night, non-stop.<\/p>\n<p>The last metal spikes, at the lower end of the remaining motorised vehicle-entrance gate, are now regularly being broken off a few at a time.<\/p>\n<p>I wouldn&#8217;t be surprised if we were to wake up tomorrow and find this entire gate gone, too.<\/p>\n<p>How can this be happening we ask ourselves?<\/p>\n<p>Don&#8217;t security officers in South Africa do American-styled \u201cstakeouts\u201d, set up surveillance or patrol more frequently?<\/p>\n<p>A golden opportunity to catch these thugs in the act has been lost.<\/p>\n<p>I weep, I fret and I wring my hands in despair.<\/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='ec8fecff3f8b2f5c263efaae3c9c7b71'><\/div>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Perfect opportunity to catch thieves lost, says local resident.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1848,"featured_media":78182,"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":[989,979,969,1032,1219,1208,2734,6229,998,1137],"class_list":["post-78159","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-germiston-saps","tag-germiston-south","tag-letter","tag-melissa-hart","tag-opinio","tag-saps","tag-theft"],"amp_enabled":true,"category_labels":{"Category":"Opinion","SubCategory":"Letters"},"tag_labels":["crime","germiston","germiston city news","germiston saps","germiston south","letter","melissa hart","opinio","SAPS","theft"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/germiston-city-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78159","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=78159"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/germiston-city-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78159\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/germiston-city-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/78182"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/germiston-city-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=78159"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/germiston-city-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=78159"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/germiston-city-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=78159"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}