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