Online Reporter
Bulawayo is witnessing an upsurge in armed robberies, a confirmation that guns are now in wrong hands.
In the past two weeks alone, police in Bulawayo were engaged in a number of shoot-out incidents with armed robbers resulting in the death of eight robbers.
Last week a police officer sergeant Abel Masava was shot dead by armed robbers after he confronted them in Sizinda suburb while a neighbourhood watch committee member from Nketa suburb recently escaped death by a whisker when one of the three armed men he confronted during a night patrol, fired at him and missed.
The armed robbers continue to change their modus operandi hence the need for the police to take advantage of the modern policing’s advanced technologies to monitor their activities and swiftly respond to distress calls.
The police should be on top of the game and there is an urgent need to conduct another exercise to check on gun licences. We have every season to believe that most of the guns being used by robbers were either stolen or smuggled into the country from neighbouring countries such as South Africa.
The criminals committing the robberies live in communities and it is therefore incumbent upon each and every citizen to report these criminals to the police. Residents should assist the police to flush out these undesirable elements that are terrorising them by providing information.
In a bid to fight crime, police in Bulawayo in October last year launched closed-circuit television (CCTV) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems in the city to enhance their policing activities.
The system leverages artificial intelligence and other advanced technologies to reduce reliance on physical police presence. Under the system which at the moment just covers the Central Business District (CBD), cameras which have sophisticated features such as facial recognition, night vision and vehicle plate recording devices are strategically positioned to record data.
This is in line with modern policing that provides real-time monitoring and analysis of activities in a given area. Due to limited resources, it is not feasible to have the entire city monitored by CCTVs hence the need for residents to continue complementing police efforts to fight crime by providing information. We have already alluded to the fact that the armed robbers that are terrorising residents live in communities and these communities should reject them.
Communities, we want to emphasise, should not be safe havens for criminals. At this juncture, we want to once again implore the police to undertake another clean up exercise to get rid of guns in wrong hands.
