Durban - NEW STUDENTS who will be living in the Durban CBD are being warned not to trust anyone when they walk around the city.
The CBD Community Policing Forum (CPF) said young people who did not understand city life often became the targets of criminals in the first few months of each year.
CPF spokesperson Rajay Soojay said: “These young people from rural and other areas are innocent and don’t know how to see the bad in people. Criminals study and analyse these youngsters and can see who they can target. They might be mugged or worse. The major problem is the drug lords or dealers who sit around students’ accommodation, targeting vulnerable youth to get them into dealing or using drugs.”
Soojay said the CPF and law enforcement agencies could not make arrests without evidence or dealers being caught red-handed with drugs.
“We can’t arrest people who are sitting next to the road throughout the night, because they are just sitting. We might have suspicions that they might be dealing, but we don’t have evidence. We can only urge the students not to get fooled by them.”
Soojay said reporting crime was very important. “When someone gets mugged or they just snatch your phone and you don’t report it, that incident is not known and it won’t make it to the crime stats. The reason the CBD does not appear on the top of the list of crime stats is because people don’t report crime.”
He said parts of the CBD were filthy and “where there is filth, there is crime”. “Crime hot spots are those places where there is high population density, such as Broad Street, and all the areas where there is dirt and running dirty water, ” he said.
Metro police spokesperson Superintendent Parboo Sewpersad said new students should be vigilant at all times.
“They must always have emergency numbers very close and they must not use the same routes all the time. When they know they will be walking at night, they must walk in groups and try to walk in areas where there are CCTV cameras.”
They must not walk with a phone in their hands, he added.