Let’s unite against crime
Criminals have been terrorising residents across the country stealing from them in their homes, cars, businesses and other places. It is common knowledge that as the festive season approaches, thieves become hungrier for other people’s belongings.
We would like to urge the Botswana Police Service and other stakeholders to continue with their efforts to curb the growing trend of theft. The police have done a tremendous job in containing violent crime like cash-in-transit heists as well as ATM bombings. As much as we commend the police for this, we would like to point out the gap in fighting the so-called petty crimes. We see on Facebook everyday people looking for thieves who were captured on CCTV cameras shoplifting and and other petty crimes. Where are the streets cameras that cost the taxpayer millions of pula? Government should be able to assist people nab some of these criminals by complementing the public efforts with the use of the sophisticated cameras.
We also experience increasing ‘digital’ crime where cellular phones, computers and other gadgets are stolen and could be easily be traced, but people do not get their belongings because the authorities are reluctant to play their role. We have seen during murder cases that mobile phones can actually be easily traced and suspects brought to book. We believe by going an extra mile and showing people that they cannot get away with crime, that could be a deterrent of some sort.
We further call on the police, the Directorate of Intelligence and Security (DIS) and other competent authorities to arm themselves for the ever increasing cyber crimes including cyber attacks on social media, mobile money system scams and related activities. Batswana continue to be scammed and we believe this can stop with the relevant authorities taking action to deter would be offenders.
As for Batswana, we are the biggest stakeholders to our lives. It is us who can allow something to persist or come to an end. We live with these criminals, we sleep with them, we eat with them, we share their proceeds, and we also encourage them by buying stolen properties from them. If we are to win this battle, we should all play our roles and look out for one another on top of taking better care of ourselves and our properties. We should also learn to ask for help to avoid online scammers who usually target unsuspecting individuals. It is also critical that we keep on improving efforts like ntebele ke go lebele (crime prevention) and others to improve our safety. We should move past individualism and look out for our neighbours when they are away.