Don’t become a victim of violent crime in South Africa
Arm yourself with knowledge and technology to improve your home and personal security, resulting in a safer environment for you and your family.
What should one do after you have been a victim of a...
... burglary?
Do not enter the house in case there are still suspects inside the house. You do not want a dangerous encounter. If you have an armed response company, call them now as they can generally get there sooner than the police.
Then call 10111 for police help. Do NOT bother phoning your local police station as the response vehicles are controlled by 10111, not the stations. Only contact your local station if you cannot get through to 10111.
Give your name, address and the nearest street corner to your home to the operator, and let them know you have been burgled (not robbed). Speak clearly and slowly. You are likely to be anxious and irate at this stage which results in you speaking quicker than normal. This is also South Africa and with 11 official languages, the chances are you are dealing with someone who is not using their home language. You will also need to give your name and telephone number. There is not usually a need to give your full name at this stage, this just complicates the situation, especially if you have a long name or one that is difficult to pronounce. Use a short name or nick name if need be to keep it simple. It is just so that they know who called if they phone back to get more information.
Wait for the police to arrive and try not to touch or disturb anything. The length of time you have to wait will vary. Understand that if your life is not in danger as is seldom the case in a burglary, the police will prioritise more threatening calls before yours. It is not a case of them not caring. Their response time is therefore dependant on the number of other calls received at the same time as yours and is therefore fairly random. It would not be unreasonable to phone back after two hours to enquire how far the police vehicle is from attending your complaint.
The police will open a case docket at your premises. If they feel there is a good chance of finger prints, they will then call the finger print unit in, but this will not always happen. This unit generally works office hours except for major crime scenes so ask the policeman as to when they are likely to arrive. Have some form of identification with you in order to complete the forms in the docket.
You will not be given a case number straight away. After a few hours or the next day, you can phone your local police station and they will give you the case number. The case number will be required by your insurers. It will also be needed to find out who the detective is investigating your case so that you can contact them personally if more information about the crime comes to light at a later stage.
Do go to the effort of opening a case. Often people say that its pointless as nothing ever happens. Its true that there is probably very little that a detective can do about a single burglary, but they use the dockets for two things. Firstly they are able to pick up trends as the criminals are generally repeat offenders. With this and other crime intelligence they are able to eventually hunt down the perpetrators. Secondly the police base their crime prevention activities on crime statistics. If you don’t open dockets and tell them where the crimes are happening they won’t spend as much time patrolling your area.
Improve your home security so that the burglary won’t happen again. Register for our free email course below for further tips on how to do this.
