POLICE have admitted challenges in fighting cases of armed robbery that have rocked Beitbridge over the past fortnight.
This is despite a new crop of officers in the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) mainstream having been deployed between May and June in the border town.
The robbers target well-to-do residents, with particular interest in cross-border transporters and money changers living in the affluent SDP area, named after its spatial development programme.
Residents in the suburb are having sleepless nights, apprehensive that robbers can break in anytime.
“We have a challenge in that area. It is not lit because it is a new suburb. We are working on it,” national police spokesman Assistant Commissioner Paul Nyathi said in an interview.
“We are planning to establish a police base in that area and we are appealing to residents to work with us and we will bring these culprits to book.”
He denied claims that police were incapacitated to deal with the vice.
Residents are, however, convinced that police patrols are few and far apart.
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They also allege mainstream CID concentration is inside the Beitbridge Border Post, where police officers allegedly line their pockets through corrupt activities and by extorting money from travellers.
“We are in trouble because no one is patrolling our suburb. There is little police visibility and we are at the mercy of the robbers. Every night, there has been an incident in the last two weeks,” residents’ representative Abel Hindi said.
A victim, Livison Ncube, said he lost US$3 000 and R87 000 and all his electrical gadgets to armed robbers recently.
“Only one wore a mask. They never gave me a chance to look at them and (they) hit me with a bar when I attempted to,” he said.
Sources at Beitbridge police said the newly-deployed CID officers were corrupt.
“They are a group of people deployed here because they paid their way. Most of them are officers who came to Beitbridge on ‘Operation No To Cross Border Crime’ and realised there was financial activity,” one of the sources said.
Recently, Nyathi said police were investigating their human resources officer after it emerged that some of the new deployments paid between US$400 and US$600 to be moved to Beitbridge.
