We are back into what one can refer to as a season of robberies. It seems these robbers have an intricate way of communicating and unleashing terror on society. Or is this just a mere coincidence that these robberies occur almost at one time?
I should have begun by commending the police for the sterling work of arresting the four robbers in the town of Mogoditshane. This is indeed commendable for security agents to apprehend robbers in this manner.
We applaud the police for the job well done even though we are aware that other security agencies are also involved. It is the police that get a pat on the back if things go right and equally so, if things go awfully wrong, they would still bear the blame alone. But it seems like the police are going to be overly preoccupied in the coming weeks and months.
The Mogoditshane plot is the most recent one and there are many lessons learnt from that incident. Social media was already abuzz with the robbery news while it was still happening at the crime scene. Social media is of course a double edged sword; it has its own merits and demerits.
The Mogoditshane robbery has several interesting aspects and at the top is the disarming of the police escorts by the robbers. How on earth did this happen? This has been a disgrace but the act has been propitiated by their colleagues in the arrest of the four robbers in a swift manner.
I listened to the Head of Police PR over the radio in the same afternoon. I think the fellow was simply preparing the public for something bigger as the details will soon unfold. The two police were disarmed and the question remains; how?
As members of the public, we must acknowledge that the police or security agents are working under very difficult circumstance in regard to the crime of cash heist. Almost all of these show signs of an inside job and that complicates things much further.
While the news from Mogoditshane were still hot, yet another armed robbery was reported near Orapa House where three robbers were apprehended with one shot on the leg while the fourth culprit escaped. Like I earlier said, it seems it’s a season for bad things in crime.
During the state of emergency and particularly during the two previous lockdowns, crime statistics went down in a big way. For some reason we read this to mean that there were no robbers, but instead the environment was not just right for their acts.
In the one and half years of the state of emergency, the security organs of this nation should have intensified their intelligence gathering efforts in order to determine where next these acts of criminality were going to happen. Obviously this was a time for planning on the side of the law offenders and they should have been placed on radar.
But we must acknowledge that it is much difficult to follow through their acts of darkness because the robbers also operate under radar. But in certain cases it’s the repeat offenders that are involved in these incidents of crime such as is the case in Mogoditshane.
The Mogoditshane incident clearly indicates that had the robbers been killed in the first of their robberies, we wouldn’t be where we are now. This is why I believe this country must adopt the shoot to kill stance when it comes to armed robberies. It seems this would be the last deterrence that would work in our case. If robbers know it clearly that they are walking into a battlefield, a majority of them wouldn’t dare.
The one thing that Isaac Kgosi was good at was the way he dealt with robbers and that’s the only thing I will ever give him credit on, nothing else. I therefore advance the idea that robbers must be shot and killed on the scene of the crime. Period! Otherwise we are forever going to be going in circles trying to deal with this problem.
DIS must intensify eavesdropping on communication lines of these syndicates and the intelligence information shared with other security agencies. The police have an intricate web of security cameras across the city in Gaborone and that compliments any work done by DIS. The robbers must be hunted and shot at the crime scene.
The shoot on sight policy has its own advantages and disadvantages. In the case of the Mogoditshane robbery, if the robbers were dealt with summarily, we were not going to waste time coming in and out of court. The case would be closed and the South African High Commission could be the agency running up and down preparing to repatriate the bodies of the two South African accomplices in this case.
On the other hand, the arrested robbers will yield sufficient and critical information on the patterns of this crime. They usually work in syndicates with a mastermind tucked away far in a gated suburb. The arrest will help the police to piece together information that will lead to unravelling other mysteries of previous robberies.
But as I applaud the police for a job well done, I urge the public to exercise restrain when it comes to getting to crime scenes involving robbers. From the videos shared in Mogoditshane, it looked awful. The public were all over polluting the crime scene.
It is important that as members of the public, we stay away from such scenes. If the unfortunate happens, most will be sorry. People can get injured in the course of fire exchange between the police and the robbers. If the robbers were brave enough to disarm the police escorts, then there was nothing stopping them from engaging the police in a gun battle.
The police should have blocked the roads that were leading to the scene where the robbers were apprehended. It is equally the duty of the police to disperse the “seeing” crowds for their safety even with tear gas if necessary.
