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These days, the closest I get to a night out on Long Street is a drive-by after dinner to see what the young folk are up to.

On the odd occasion that I have ventured into town, the non-stop offers to buy drugs is enough to remind me that Long Street ain’t for me.

If you ask seasoned journalist Raymond Joseph, he would agree, having had a pretty torrid time out two weekends ago. Joseph and his American friends grabbed a bite to eat on Long Street, and he was pleasantly surprised by the buzz of the city centre.

That all changed pretty quickly, so let’s get his account via the Daily Maverick:

As we were saying our goodbyes a fight broke out between two men next to us on the pavement. I felt a bump from behind and realised that my phone, which I had put into my back pocket to hug goodbyes, had been pickpocketed. The fight had been a diversion.

The man who had stolen my phone walked into the middle of a group of people and then a woman broke away from them at a fast walk.

Realising she had my phone, I went after her, but found myself surrounded by three menacing men. In the brief time it took to push past them, she had disappeared.

Speaking to a car guard and other bystanders afterwards I learned that this gang hangs around the area to rob people, seemingly with impunity.

Yep, I have also been a victim of phone theft on Long Street, although I fell for the classic ‘Nice Shoes’ gag.

So one or two robberies don’t make for a crisis, but ask businesses that operate on Long Street, and they will tell you that these are far from isolated incidents:

The most recent police crime statistics reveal that the CBD of Cape Town is the number one hot spot for reported crimes in the Western Cape.

And, on investigating over the last few days, I learned that mugging, pickpocketing, drug dealing, breaking into vehicles and other crimes are rife in the centre of Cape Town.

It is centred mainly around Long Street, but has also crept into nearby Bree Street, another nighttime restaurant and party area. Muggings and robberies are not uncommon after dark in the narrow cobbled streets of nearby Bo-Kaap.

There’s also that terrifying taxi scam to look out for. Seriously, pay attention to the cars you hop into after a night out.

For those who think we’re being overly dramatic, here’s Councillor JP Smith, Cape Town’s head of safety and security:

“We are fighting for the survival of the CBD,” he says.

Much of the crime, he claims, is the work of hardened gangsters who have been released on bail back on to the streets because prisons are overcrowded. Prisoners are “disgorged on to the streets all the time” when occupancy in a prison “reaches 200%”, he says.

“We have a crisis on our streets.”

Many of the released prisoners were homeless and surviving by committing crime. “We have a new type of violent and dangerous homeless person living on the streets,” Smith says in response to an outcry over the targeting of homeless people by the City of Cape Town.

We should mention that Smith is very keen to quell the uproar around Cape Town’s treatment of its homeless population, and is on something of a media blitz.

People end up on the street for many reasons other than being booted from prison for overcrowding.

As anybody who has ever tried to report a crime on Long Street will tell you, it’s a pointless exercise. When I tried, the police laughed and told me the ‘Nice Shoes’ gang rob people like that all the time, and operate in the same area every night.

When Joseph tried, he found disinterested police and a number of frustrated victims:

When I asked why statements were not captured on computer at the time of a crime being reported, I was told this had been tried and then abandoned “because the computers kept breaking”. My attempt the next day to get a case number for an insurance claim was delayed because “the system is down”.

That’s all you’re really doing when you fill in those forms – sorting out your insurance.

JP Smith says the SAPS needs to step up and police the area more effectively, and they need the Cape Town Central City Improvement District (CCID) officers to aid them:

Muneeb Hendricks, CCID safety and security manager, said they had limited powers of arrest, and were only “mandated to offer a top-up service to our primary partners and law enforcement agencies, SAPS and the City of Cape Town. We are not there to replace the role of the SAPS.”

Well, someone has to step up. The Cape Town CBD is amongst the most visited tourist spots in the entire country, and at present, it’s not painting the prettiest of pictures.

Then again, when you look at how thinly stretched the SAPS’ resources are, and you take a look at what’s going on in areas like Philippi East (11 people killed in less than 24 hours), it puts things into perspective.

It also makes avoiding a night out on Long Street a pretty easy decision.

[source:dailymaverick]