News

CPNW AGM Reminder

Date posted: November 9, 2016

CPNW NEWSLETTER, October 2016

Date posted: October 9, 2016

Dear Neighbours

As the writer of this newsletter I must first of all apologise for the long silence – it has fortunately been pretty quiet in our area in contrast to my action-packed day jobs as a lecturer at UCT and a psychiatrist on the Cape Flats!

We are aware of two incidents in our area in August and two in September. On 16/08 a flat on Avondrust Farm was broken into and on 21/08 a car was broken into in Hoek Street and a motorbike was tampered with.

We were informed via SAPS of a break-in in Ratelklip Close on the night of 19 September and a car was broken into at the Beach Parking lot on the 23^rd. Fortunately with the latter incident we were able to get some images of the perpetrators and their vehicle and then confirmed its registration by correlating those images with ones on our licence plate recognition system – this information was passed on to SAPS.

Great work from members of the San Michel and Danieldale NW’s together with our own members resulted in a successful arrest this week. A vehicle, that was wanted in connection with a burglary in the Tableview area was spotted passing through the cameras in San Michel and members of all the local NWs and ADT were alerted. The vehicle was then picked up by one of the Avondrust cameras and was then spotted by our ADT patrolmen who followed it down Beach Rd where it was seen parking. Some occupants were seen entering a pub whilst others were later spotted walking back towards Main Road, where they were intercepted. In the meantime a case number had been obtained from the Tableview police and local SAPS members were called for assistance. All three occupants of the vehicle were then detained, along with their vehicle and handed over to the Tableview police. Although no crime was committed in our area this kind of action not only serves to fight criminals in general but, as experience seems to have shown, is effective in sending out a strong message that this is a no-go area for criminals, whether they are engaging in business or leisure!

Perhaps reinforcing this view is the unhappy news that the areas around us, particularly Fishoek, Sunnydale and Sun Valley, have been experiencing very high levels of criminal activity, including an increase in the number of home invasions. This has coincided with poor staffing levels at Fishoek SAPS that fortunately are now receiving attention. However, it is clear that the poor state of economy is likely to be driving crime and we also know that our area tends to have more crime in the summer, once the wetlands have dried out – so it is very important that we all get ready for a busier time in the next few months. With that in mind we encourage everyone to check out your alarms systems and practise your radio checks if you are a radio user!

We have been looking at a very useful new smartphone application, known as T-Trumpet that will offer us everything we get from the WhatsApp groups but with a far greater capacity to manage large membership groups and to filter information streams. Designed specifically to enhance neighbourhood crime-fighting capacity (by a company owned by a CPNW member and developed with our input) this App seems to offer great advantages to us and we will be testing it initially among radio users before considering a wider roll-out, so please watch this space!

We will be discussing this and our other plans for constantly keeping a few steps ahead of the criminal mind at our upcoming AGM, so please come along! We plan to have it at Monkey Valley on 14 November at 1800. As usual we will try to keep things concise but informative and it is always a great time to get together and remind ourselves of what a great community we have. So save the date!

Wishing you a safe October!

The CPNW Committee

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CPNW July Newsletter

Date posted: August 1, 2016

Dear Neighbours

We are delighted to be able to have very little to report in terms of local crime activity since the last newsletter, with the only really notable incidents being thefts of mobile phones at a couple of restaurants. There have however been reports of a home invasion in Sun Valley and also in Crofters Valley, whilst those who use the Mountain should be aware the theft of an MTB, from a female cyclist on the Ou Wa Pad on morning of Friday 22 July.

Perhaps the most dramatic event in our area was a fire at 4 Malabar Close on June 28. Thanks to a very quick response from neighbours, the fire, which seems to have spread into the roof from an excessively hot chimney was quickly contained and put out by the fire department. The owners of the house have asked us to pass on their thanks to everyone who got involved.

If you haven’t done so already, do have a look at the article on the K9 Unit on our website. We are enormously grateful to Gavin Goldblatt for leading this initiative and to everyone else involved. As the article illustrates so well, some of the most effective and sustainable we can develop as a neighbourhood watch evolve as community projects with benefits that extend well beyond simple crime prevention.

On that note, we hope everyone has been taking notice of the steady evolution taking place at the former “Standby Quarters”, neighbouring the City Parks building on Avondrust Circle. This has already seen a steady inflow of contributions in the form of time, materials, goods and services from a growing body of generous neighbours whose collective efforts have led to significant progress. This includes the preparation of an area for the use of our armed response officers and for their shift changes, the establishment of a control room that is now ready to be set up with monitors and communication equipment, work on a meeting room which is nearing completion, the preparation of a site for storage of firefighting equipment, alarming of the building, the placement of an electric gate and a good deal of work on the grounds which are starting to look really nice. Also on our plans are an information office and the development of the remaining areas, which consist of two large rooms as a community hall. Of course this will all need further work and contributions but we really feel that this project will not only move our security preparedness to another level but also result in a lovely central “home” for all sorts of community events. So if you have a skill we could use ore can contribute in any other way, we’d love you to get involved!

So, on a rather more positive note than usual, we wish everyone a safe month!

The CPNW Committee.

Introducing the K9 Unit of CPNW

Date posted: July 23, 2016

Through a CPNW initiative led by Gavin Goldblatt, there is now a working K9 team of local dogs with owner handlers trained for tracking people lost on the mountain as well as crime prevention and detection activities. They have already been called out to crime scenes on several occasions, with some success.

Gavin says, “We currently meet on an ad hoc basis, typically once or twice a week. We would welcome any new participants and would happily organise regular training sessions until the dogs are at a standard where they can be integrated into our ad hoc sessions. Most dogs are capable – currently we have a golden retriever, a boxer, an Australian cattle dog and a jack russell in the team. As long as the dog is enthusiastic and wants to work for the handler it can learn to track. Generally, the younger the dog the better – whilst old dogs can learn new tricks they often are less enthusiastic then younger dogs. I must emphasise that the first priority of everything we do is dog and handler safety, and the second is enjoyment by the dog.”

Trish Bolleurs is an active member of the team with her golden retriever, and has this to say about the training: “After each training session I have felt a closer bond with my own dog as well as an incredible respect for her sense of smell and abilities in this regard. A dog’s gift of smell is incomprehensible to us humans, to the degree that they can track so efficiently.  Air scenting and ground scenting is what the dogs have become proficient in, due to perseverance and encouragement from Gavin.  I highly encourage any dog enthusiast who has the time to devote to their community to get involved with their dogs of any breed. As a team, we are merely trying to make Noordhoek a safer environment, looking out for each other, and letting those bad elements out there know it will be a difficult task to infiltrate!”

Gavin’s vision is to train a number of K9 units associated with the neighbourhood watches throughout the Valley, and have competitions several times a year to keep interest and standards high.

If you’d like to know more about the programme, or you’re interested in becoming involved, please contact Gavin Goldblatt, gavin@cladegroup.com.

Verified – ADT Email Message: WELCOME TO ADT e-STATEMENTS

Date posted: July 13, 2016

Being security minded, we checked out an email that many of our CPNW members may have received, just to be sure it’s real and not a scam phishing for private information.  ADT contacts have verified it is a legitimate campaign to announce their new e-Statement, and to solicit your updated information online.  It always pays to check before replying to any request for private information, even from your security company!

CPNW Newsletter, June 2016

Date posted: June 27, 2016

Dear Neighbours

It has been a relatively quiet month, as is typical for the winter season, with only two incidents since the last newsletter. The most recent of these took place on 19/06 in Nassau Rd when an outside flat was broken into but the burglars seem to have been chased off by the dogs and the alarm activation, though not before causing some damage.  As those who have read recent newsletters will know, Avondrust Farm has been the target of a spate of recent robberies and in response we worked with the owner to set up a number of our “Roboguard” portable movement monitors, in order to try and detect any further intrusions. Sure enough, the owner received an alert and briefly apprehended a suspect who unfortunately managed to flee, after receiving an application of pepper spray, leaving behind a dagga pipe and his cell-phone.  Members of CPNW’s newly established K9 unit responded to a call to assist in searching for him and his tracks were followed into the wetlands. His description reportedly fitted the profile of a known criminal and police were confident of tracking him down through his phone.

We are delighted with how effectively our tracker-dog teams seem to be working! We are hopeful that word will spread about our latest crime fighting capability and this will serve as yet another deterrent to anyone considering criminal activity in our area. We have been really impressed by the ability that some of the neighbourhood dogs have shown in learning to track down someone hiding in the bush, on only the vaguest of scents and we are hugely grateful to Gavin Goldblatt for the wonderful training he has offered as well as to Trish Bolleurs for taking the lead on this initiative!

Karen Macintyre, on behalf of the Committee has been doing a heroic job of updating our database and managed to identify 146 households in the area who were not signed up as members, including a number who were making donations to us without being signed up! The now updated list shows a total of 417 signed-up members and we are hugely grateful to the 14 (out of 112) members who are not ADT customers who immediately made substantial voluntary contributions and to the 11 (of 34) ADT customers who responded by instructing ADT to add a voluntary contribution to their monthly fees. Thank you! We hope others will follow suit.

We are continuing our work on the Control Centre which is nearing completion and we are grateful to ADT for supporting us with an alarm system and monitoring. Once we have completed the Control Centre we will be looking for volunteers to develop the rest of the area into a Community Hall. It really has the potential to become a wonderful community gathering place, so if taking that forward sounds like something you would be keen to work on, please watch this space!

Wishing you all a warm and safe July!

The CPNW Committee

CPNW Newsletter, May 2016

Date posted: June 3, 2016

Dear Neighbours

Unfortunately we must begin this letter on a very sad note: We learned early in May of the death of our ADT Patrol Officer Rie Shonga, who some may have been aware had gone missing over the long weekend. We regret not being able to release this news earlier, as we have been awaiting final confirmation of the information from SAPS and ADT (and still are). It would seem that he was murdered in an incident unrelated to his work in our community. We have been assured, by ADT, that the financial well-being of any dependents is well looked after through their insurance policies and that they take extensive steps to support the bereaved. We have also contacted his mother to express our sadness and condolences and to pass on the outstanding bonus that he was due to receive. We remember him as someone whom we could depend upon to be there when we needed him and as a warm and helpful individual who will be sorely missed.

Quite a few of you will be receiving this newsletter for the first time.  We would like to welcome all our new members to Chapman’s Peak and to wish you a happy stay in our village.  To those receiving this who have not just moved into the area: over the past couple of weeks we have been doing a cross check with ours and ADT’s database, and found that you have been donating to the CPNW coffers monthly through ADT, but never took the final step of registering on our website.  We have, therefore, for your convenience, registered on your behalf.  We would be grateful if you could go to our website www.cpnw.org.za and check your details, as we were only able to complete the bare minimum.  We would like to take this opportunity, however, to thank you for supporting us financially! As you will see below, we are currently making some big investments in community resources.

We are also very grateful to those members we identified, who have unknowingly not been making contributions, and who have been quick to remedy this!

Crime-wise, we are aware of three incidents that were reported to us, of breaking and entering, with out-buildings remaining a primary target. Two such incidents were reported on Avondrust Farm, with the theft of batteries and a charger in one incident, and of laptops in the other. Another break-in occurred in Cardinal Close, with the theft of a bolt cutter and an angle grinder.

Better, and possibly related news, is that a house in Fishoek was raided by SAPS and two large crates of tools were found so it may be worth paying SAPS a visit if you are one of the recent victims of this kind of crime.

We also received a report through SAPS that a Tazz was stolen from the Farm Village area on May 20 but we do not have many details so if anyone does have any more information, please let us know.

As mentioned, the Community Centre/Control Room is coming on in leaps and bounds and we are hugely grateful to everyone who has been working on it, particularly Patrick Wright and Patty Fennell who have done a great job of coordinating the work. This is being done in collaboration with the San Michel (SMNW), Danieldale and Dassenberg/Crofters Valley (DASCRO) neighbourhood watches, who all have made significant donation of money as well as labour. We are close to completing the control room area, which will enable us to set up a highly sophisticated system to monitor the borders of all our areas. We have been donated some vital equipment, but we will need to raise additional resources to make it operational, in a campaign spearheaded by SMNW with our support. Once we have completed this and the new ADT shift-change quarters, we will start work on the community hall area and we are also about to purchase a container to store our newly acquired firefighting equipment. Of course, this all requires funding and we are not unaware of the financial squeeze many are experiencing. We do believe however, that this is an opportunity to develop exceptional facilities that will not only enhance our crime combating capabilities but also build our community even more.

We are very pleased to note further growth of the Community Connector groups! If you are not a member of one of these yet, please do so – it really is not that hard to speak to your neighbours and set up a little contact group, yet the benefits to your safety could be invaluable. Please let Lynne lchogan@netactive.co.za know if you have set one up, or if you would like to do so.

It is also great to see that the radio network keeps on growing – we now have a total of 133 radio users, which comes to almost one out of every three households. However, a radio is useless if you are not confident to use it, or if nobody is listening. So, please keep your radios switched on, to channel 8 and please do radio checks once in a while (before 2100!!), with everyone in the family getting a chance to practice!

We wish you all a safe month!

The CPNW Committee

CPNW Newsletter, April 2016

Date posted: May 4, 2016

Dear Neighbours

Unfortunately we have had a concerning upsurge in break-ins, with at least 5 since our last newsletter, mostly involving the removal of large items, particularly from store-rooms and out-buildings in the area with forceful entry using bolt-cutters and other such equipment.

On the night of 30/31 March an outbuilding in Dunedin Rd was broken into and a number of gardening and horse-riding items were taken.

On 1 April in a similar incident a lock was broken and a range of high-value tools and a bicycle were stolen.

On 8 April a large flat-screen television was removed from a cottage on Avondrust Farm.

On the night of 16/17 April thieves climbed into a property under construction in Protea Street. Padlocks were forced and an extension lead was taken but it looks as though the thieves were disturbed as items were found removed from the building but left on the property. It would seem that a further attempt was made on this site on the weekend of 23/24 April as the padlock on the gate of this property was cut and the gates were wide open when the contractor arrived on site on the Monday, however nothing appeared to have been stolen.

On the night of 16/17 April the large shop front window at the Noordhoek Riding Association Clubhouse was smashed. Thieves removed a fridge, brush cutter and selection of tools, although the fridge was later recovered in wetlands. They also broke into the judges’ box and trashed the interior.

It is evident that these various break-ins involve more than one person and in many cases there may have been multiple visits, possible use of transport or hiding places in the wetlands to dispose of large objects and possible prior surveillance in identifying vulnerable out-buildings. We would thus urge everyone to be on the lookout for anyone who might be conducting surveillance and for groups in the area at odd hours or carrying suspicious items. Please also review your security on out-buildings and regularly check your perimeters for signs of a breech that may be in preparation for a break-in.

On a more positive note, work is progressing nicely on the Community Centre and we are enormously grateful to everyone who has come forward to help or to provide materials we have requested! We are funding the building work in collaboration with our neighbouring NW’s who have all made generous donations. The current focus is on making the place secure and habitable, with our initial priority being the establishment of a Control Room that will coordinate the activities of all the local NW’s and will enable us to utilise a range of sophisticated surveillance equipment that we have been offered. We will keep everyone posted as this progresses as well as on the next exciting phase which will involve the establishment of the Community Hall.

We are currently also working to establish exactly what we do have in place in our area in terms of CCTV cameras etc that we could hopefully eventually link up into a coordinated system, so we would be grateful if anyone who has any external (ie aimed at roadways/perimeter areas etc) CCTV systems in operation to please let us know at:  membership@cpnw.org.za with a contact number and a member of our team will get in touch with you.

We have been struck by how successful the Community Connectors groups have been where these have been established. These are relatively easy to set up and coordinate using Apps such as WhatsApp but can also be done through an exchange of emails or simply telephone numbers. Many members of such groups have given wonderful feedback on how safe it makes them feel (especially when alone at home and things go bump in the night!) as well as how it develops a sense of neighbourliness and community spirit – with relatively little effort! We really don’t feel that asking neighbours to exchange numbers, to let one another know if you are going away and to call for help if you are scared is such a big ask, so we really cannot understand why there are still significant parts of the neighbourhood where these have not yet been established. To date we are not aware of the existence of groups in the following areas:  Village Lane + the Farm Village houses; Chaplin Close; Protea Rd; Erica Rd; Disa Rd; Pepper Street; Buren Rd; Leerdam Rd; Willoughby Rd and in the beginning of Beach Rd  on the Left Hand Side. If you have already started a group in one of these areas, or would like some help in doing so, please contact Lynne at lchogan@netactive.co.za .

Wishing you all a safe month of May!

The CPNW Committee

Census Officials in Noordhoek Area – VW Polo Vehicle

Date posted: April 15, 2016

Census officials driving a beige VW Polo have been in the Noordhoek area since yesterday afternoon, and briefly again today. They may be back later today and over the next days.

Residents are advised that SAPS have confirmed above – please don’t be alarmed by this vehicle or a possible knock on the door by them. The 4 female officials are wearing yellow bibs and have all the relevant identification documents on them, and their work in the general area will be completed by 22 April.

CAN YOU HELP? Hand Basin and Toilet Bowl Needed

Date posted: April 11, 2016

Dear Neighbours,
Used is fine – they just need to be in reasonable shape.

Noordhoekers are helping us renovate the old Standby Quarters on Avondrust Circle to a Neighbourhood Watch HQ. Down the line, this building will also be a functioning community centre. We’re not in full gear yet – still much to do – but on occasion, to save money, we’ll be asking for a few items you may have in storage – like the above. Please let us know if you can donate…