Date posted: March 24, 2016
Dear NeighboursPlease accept my apologies for the lack of a newsletter in February, even in a leap year it just seemed too short for me!
Fortunately it was a very quiet month, crime-wise with only one report of one (confirmed) vehicle and possibly two others that had their tyres punctured in Village Lane on the 13th.
March has been rather more eventful; a shed in the garden of a home in Mountain Rd was burgled, with three mountain bikes, some clothing items, a switchboard and some telephones stolen. This seems to have involved several intrusions onto the property prior to the actual theft, when it appears some preparatory work was done. This is something we have been hearing about frequently of late, with many robberies, including home invasions and smash-and-grabs being preceded by actions such as the cutting of fences and the disabling of security equipment prior to the final action. So please take care to check the perimeters of your properties regularly and to have a high index of suspicion when cameras or other outdoor surveillance equipment seem to have suddenly developed problems.
A house in Willow Rd, that was unoccupied at the time, had a window broken with a rock on 12 March, but the intruders seem to have fled without taking anything after the alarm went off and ADT as well as reaction team responders quickly arrived on the scene. This was also a first test for our new “K9” capability (see below), and although no one was caught one of our recently trained tracker-dogs immediately located the escape route.
We had two arrests in the area; one on 12 March when ADT was called to a property in Oak Ave, when someone working on the property was caught stealing tools, whilst in a more bizarre incident, a naked man carrying a knife was apprehended by ADT and arrested after being spotted in several properties in the Katzenellenbogen area. He was apparently on the run from an incident in Masiphumelele.
On a more positive note, we were finally given the lease for the old “Standby Quarters” on Avondrust Circle (between the Municipal Building and the planned restaurant) with permission to use it as a Neighbourhood Watch Control Centre and as a Community Centre. We are hugely grateful to Patrick Wright for his dogged persistence in securing the lease after a process that has taken over a year to finalise! Our first step was to invite representatives of all the NW’s and community groups in Noordhoek to join us in planning how we will develop and use the site and under Patrick’s able leadership work is already under way. The first step will be to make the building safe and habitable and to set up the control room with longer term plans to establish a community centre as well as to develop and utilise the considerable outdoor space. We are very excited about the prospects for this building as a place we can all share for a range of community activities and we see it as another great way of bringing our community together! Of course, to get it into the shape we would like is going to take considerable work and some funding, towards which we have already allocated R20 000, so please be ready to help out with various renovations (if you have particular skill you could offer – do let us know by emailing us at NCC@cpnw.org.za ) and we will also need to do some additional fundraising.
We are also pleased to report that our Chapman’s Peak Volunteer Fire Unit (CPVFU) is now well-established, and with the support of Enviro Wildfire Services a number of training sessions were held for residents and a first fire drill was successfully run. CPVFU have received funding support to the tune of R20 000 to purchase essential equipment for a local response and we have pledged a further R15 000 to purchase a container to store the equipment, which will be located at our new Community Centre. They will be holding further training sessions and drills in the coming months and everyone is encouraged to join these and so continue to build our ability as a community to deal with fires in the future. Email Firewise@cpnw.org.za for further information.
On the subject of funds, the latter two paragraphs should serve to illustrate how all our funding goes directly to ensuring our safety. We are grateful to all those who contribute as part of their ADT payments and especially to the few, non-ADT members who have set up standing debit orders for the small monthly contribution!
We are grateful to Gavin Goldblatt, who has extensive experience and training in working with tracker dogs, for volunteering to train interested dogs and owners in our area. This ongoing initiative has already added another formidable weapon to our crime response capacity, as in the past our response teams have, on several occasions, been evaded by criminals who have “gone to ground” in the dense bush around our area. The presence of tracker dogs will make this impossible and, as importantly, will send out another very powerful message that this is a “high-risk” area for those with criminal intent!
Finally, we must acknowledge that the horrific recent murders of teenage girls in Tokai and Khayelitsha, as well as the turbulent state of our country’s politics, have rocked our sense of safety and of connection with broader community. We have noted this in the number of anxious enquiries we have received and in calls for us to adopt the newest technologies, such as Cell 114 and other Apps, as if these will be the panacea we are looking for. We are constantly reviewing the options available but we have invested a great deal of time and energy into what we have established and we are hesitant to simply jump for the next option, particularly as we have seen how quickly any new idea becomes redundant as the innovations move forward.
Our policy has been to establish a strong backbone of communications systems which include our Website and Facebook page, the Radio Network and the WhatsApp Groups as well as the broader reach provided by the Noordhoek Community Forum. Our view is that we are all only as safe as our neighbours – knowing the people in our streets by name will already make us much safer than any high wall or big dog ever will. We believe that by connecting people we facilitate the spread of information as well as the response capacity in an emergency and that by being connected we create a sense of safety and belonging, which is vital to our resilience in the face of trauma. It is amazing how good it feels when we know we are looking out for each other!
So, once again we encourage everyone to GET CONNECTED! Use WhatApp or any other medium that connect you to your immediate neighbours and elect at least one of them to keep you connected to CPNW. Set up a group chat. Spread news positively (including this news, especially the tracker dogs – it travels far!) and build the sense of community. Hold a street braai, clean the road, do something together – let’s claim every foot of this neighbourhood, together! Investing in our own community is the best way of growing the positive in these worrying times – it begins at home. We don’t care how you do it. Just do.
Wishing you a safe month!
John and the CPNW Committee
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