Date posted: February 18, 2019

Dear Neighbours

Housebreakings

As most of you will be aware, we have had a continuation of incidents involving at least one very skilled housebreaker who generally gains access to houses by removing window panes.

At around 3am on 25 January, a house in Protea Street was broken into in this manner and a television was stolen from an outside office, whilst in Acacia street a resident was disturbed by a noise and on further inspection discovered that beading had been removed from a window. In the first instance, beams in the garden had been triggered but nothing was seen dogs were not disturbed and this was attributed to the wind. A dog at the second house was also not overly disturbed.

In another incident on 7 February the same method was used to access another house in Acacia street, after garden beams had been evaded but the burglar knocked over a table whilst removing a TV, disturbing a resident in the house. He fled, taking a few smaller valuables. Although the alarm was raised, with ADT and CPRT members responding within minutes, and an extensive search took place, no-one was apprehended.

Repeat Offender?

Information we have gathered to date suggests that the individual involved seems to have considerable knowledge about the layout of the area and seems to select targets quite carefully, possibly based on information that has been gathered. Both the modus operandi and the eyewitness descriptions are highly reminiscent of a burglar who was caught, in San Michelle after the last series of such incidents.

Pictures of this individual, who is of strikingly small stature and dark complexion, and his wife, taken during their previous court appearance have been circulated. We ask everyone to be particularly vigilant about individuals in the area who may be gathering information, particularly these two.

Hiding in Gardens

It is also worth noting that houses in the Avenues in particular have been targeted and we have good evidence from the last incident that gardens are then used as places to hide and escape routes following an incident. It is thus critical that, should there be any further incidents, as many neighbours as possible in the area surrounding the burglary are woken up and assist the search effort either by checking gardens themselves or providing access to patrollers.

This of course raises a key question we need everyone to ask yourselves: Do you know who all your neighbours are? We need, not only to be able to alert and assist one another in an emergency but also simply to know that there is not someone hiding behind that wall…

Radios

We are also asking that everyone who has a radio, does keep this charged and switched on at night (On Channel 8, out of its charger!) and for everyone else to be alert to community WhatsApp messages. We are steadily building up information on these break-ins and with sufficient support as well as a little luck, there is a real chance we can put a stop to it.

 

Fidelity-ADT Tactical Response Unit

In the wakes of these incidents as well as the more violent home invasion reported last month, we also felt it wise to use some funds we had saved to bring in additional resources in the form of the Fidelity/ADT Tactical Response Unit, which consists of teams of two highly trained security professionals are operating in the area for 12-hours shifts usually starting at midnight.

As well as coordinating our response effort with them, we have conducted another joint operation and will continue to work with them for the remaining two weeks they are in the area. We do not have funding to keep them in the area for longer and on every night but we are looking at other possibilities for keeping them involved on a less regular, but perhaps more targeted basis. 

WhatsApp Groups

On the note of WhatsApp groups, we would like to reiterate our appeals to everyone to try to be as careful as possible about only using these groups for their intended purpose! The key reason for this is that, particularly with emergency groups, such as the radio-users group, it is really important that these groups are not kept muted so that we are sure to be alerted when a message does come in, as we would want to be, in a real emergency.

That said, we are grateful for the wider awareness of this, but it has also seen a proliferation of (sometimes less-than-subtle) reminders to adhere to this policy. These then have a tendency to provoke further proliferations of what are supposed to be Emergency Alerts as we all jump in to have our say!

This not only destroys the effectiveness of these groups when we really need them but it is also a great way of undermining our sense of community. We thus would like to make a clarification regarding how we see ourselves and one proposal that we would like everyone to try to adhere to:

CPNW has, from its outset had a focus on both the safety and security of our community and we have always seen the strength of our community, as a community, as the key resource we need to maximise to achieve our goals.

We would thus like to propose that for all Emergency Messaging groups in particular, all members must avoid ALL messaging that is not directly relevant to a safety or security incident that demands an immediate alert. This includes commentary on alerts that may have been viewed as incorrectly posted (and commentary on that commentary). SO: Anyone who has an issue with content posted by another member of the group must please refer this to the Group Admin who will adjudicate and intervene if necessary.

We hope that with this simple rule we will be able to keep these channels working and available for when we really need them!

We wish you all a safe and secure month!

The CPNW Committee