robberies – praag.org

Violent crime, murder on the increase in SA

Most violent crime categories in South Africa have gone up according to 2012/13 figures and last year was the third time murder increased in 20 years.

Police Minister Nkosinathi Nhleko and national police commissioner Riah Phiyega were expected to release the 2013/14 crime statistics in Pretoria on Friday.

According to the statistics, the Eastern Cape had the highest murder rate, followed by the Western Cape, Free State, and the Northern Cape. Limpopo had the lowest murder rate.

Business robberies leaped with a staggering 300% and rural areas were more dangerous.

In 80% of cases the victim knew the perpetrator.

Aggravated robbery also went up, as did business, house, and car robberies.

Last year, the ISS (Institute for Security Studies) said the crime statistics police had released last September had contained a miscalculation, and that they had downplayed the rate of violent crime.

At the time police had used population estimates calculated by Statistics SA in 2001, which expected the population to be 50.6 million in 2011, instead of using data from the 2011 census, which showed there were 52.3m people in South Africa.

By not updating the population number, police had understated the increase in serious and violent crimes. At the time the police ministry and the national police commissioner’s office dismissed the criticism.

Police said it would apply the new population estimates, based on the 2011 census results, only from the 2012/13 financial period onwards.

South Africa’s robberies on the increase

The number of aggravated robberies increased by 1.2 percent over the past financial year, Police Minister Nathi Mthethwa said on Thursday.

However, there were still 29.7 percent fewer of these crimes than nine years ago and 18.7 percent less than four years ago, Mthethwa said at the release of the 2012/13 crime statistics in Pretoria.

Residential burglaries increased by 3.3 percent in the past financial year, and non-residential burglaries by 1.7 percent.

He said common robbery decreased by 2.2 percent over the reporting period.

“The role of the community in supplying the necessary information and the patrols of the streets has drastically reduced possibilities of this crime,” he said.

“This is corroborated by swift arrests that have been affected.”

Mthethwa said shoplifting had decreased by 3.9 percent over the same period.

There were also decreases in robberies at non-residential premises, by 0.6 percent, in cash-in-transit robberies, by 20.3 percent, and bank robberies, by 80 percent.

In the 2012/2013 financial year:

— theft out of motor vehicles increased by 3.6 percent;

— commercial crimes increased by 0.6 percent;

— car hijacking increased by 5.4 percent;

— robbery at residential premises increased by 3.6 percent;

— truck hijacking increased by 14.9 percent;

— drug-related crime increased by 13.5 percent; and

— cases of drunk driving, or driving under the influence of drugs, increased by 1.5 percent.

Mthethwa said there was an 18 percent decrease in ATM bombings, from 261 cases in 2011/12 to 214 in 2012/13.

Arson decreased by 8.7 percent over the reporting period.

“Advancement in technology on individual dwellings, the improvement of the infrastructure to reduce informal housing, as well as electricity roll-outs have also assisted in reducing this crime,” Mthethwa said.

There was a 4.1 percent decrease in malicious damage to property and a 4.4 percent decrease in the theft of motor vehicles and motorcycles. – Sapa

Gold-digging in Paris

Last week, police in the French capital arrested three people as part of a widening grave robbery investigation.

There was further public outrage after two masked intruders shot dead a 52-year old precious metal worker when he tried to stop them stealing gold from his foundry in the chic central Parisian district of Le Marais.

Police said sky-high market prices for precious metals are acting as a magnet for thieves with scant regard for the living or the dead.

In Pantin cemetery, in the north of Paris, dozens of bodies have recently been dug up, with gold teeth and jewellery stolen from them.

Police sources said the three men seized last week were gravediggers employed by the city’s cemeteries.

Last month, four other men – three from the same Pantin cemetery – were arrested and placed under investigation for aggravated theft, grave robbery and violating the integrity of a corpse.

According to a source close to the investigation, the men removed personal belongings from corpses in the freshest graves, opening them in the dead of night.

Two of the men were caught wearing miner’s helmets and gloves. Their boots were covered in fresh earth.

One of the suspects was found to be carrying 10 gold teeth.

After the initial arrests, the mayor of Paris, Bernard Delanoe, expressed his outrage and ordered the city authorities to step up surveillance of cemeteries.

Even closer to the city centre, a metalworker was gunned down last Wednesday when he fought back against motorbike helmet-clad thieves trying to break into the gold workshop where had been employed for 36 years.

A neighbour said she heard him shout: “I haven’t got the keys!” before chasing the attackers and being shot.

Visiting the scene shortly after the murder, Manuel Valls, the interior minister, admitted: “There is a problem with regulating gold, with illegal workshops that recycle gold, which is often the product of theft or snatched gold chains.”

Precious metal theft is big business is France. Earlier this year, the national rail operator, SNCF, launched a special security programme to clamp down on the massive theft of copper cables that has led to huge delays on its lines.

Ten days ago, his men broke an illicit gold reseller network operating out of the Saint Denis train station in a northern Paris suburb. “It was a real open supermarket for stolen gold. All the thieves from across the capital came there to sell their wares for cash,” he told The Daily Telegraph.

He said a large part of their booty ended up in Belgium, where “legislation is more relaxed”. – The Daily Telegraph