Standard procedure, house break-in?

[18-Xray]

I'm hoping to get some advice on procedural guidelines when a house break-in is imminent or in process.

We have recently created a Whatsapp group consisting of residents in our area. This group is used to communicate incidents of break-ins and other crime related activities. The question that now arises is what to do in case of an incident.

Some ideas that we discussed are:

(1) Call the police (10111 + sector police)
(2) Residents will trigger their alarms
(3) Neighbourhood watches close-by. (We don't have one in our area yet.)
(4) If at night, everyone should switch on their lights

Questions that need to be answered:

(1) Should neighbours respond and if so, how?
(2) Most effective way to set-up communications and a command and control centre.

What measures and additional deterrents can be put in place.

I would appreciate your ideas on the above.

Thanks.

[Castos]

If you have a Community Police Forum, link up with them as they will have patrollers. It is either in the Cape or Jhb that all houses in a certain street mounted floodlights facing into the street. When an alarm goes off, all residents switch on this light illuminating the entire street. Since then they have had no incidents.

[HvR]

Get in touch with the CPF and start a watch. First get a good portion of the neighborhood signed up and contributing with time and financially before dreaming too big about cameras, response teams and control centers. Just having a handful of committed people heading the NW and having a couple of patrols going every day (pensioners) and night (working people) that only observe, follow and report you will immediately see a drop in incidents.

You will be surprised how much difference you can make with dedicated people and basic patrol kit (high visibility jacket, big magnet signs NW signs on the patrol vehicles, orange/white light (although we have some issues with the city regarding this), log book, cellphone, e-mail communication and Whatsapp group).

Forget about 10111 it is a waste of precious time. My plan is as follow:
1) Trigger alarm with multiple panic button presses
2) Call NW response number, they contact SAPS sector patrol vehicle, both dedicated AR area vehicles and SAPS ops room and on duty NW patrol vehicle so that can observe and follow.
3) If NW number fails I have the number for the SAPS sector patrol vehicle, SAPS ops room and SAPS station
4) Then my own "home defense" plan goes into action until help arrives.

When NW is setup and registered, encourage better safety and security measure for everyone in the neighbourhood to make the whole neighbourhood a less desirable target. This is multi-layered security, lights especially on the street sight, closing blinds to the street side at night and making sure gates and garage doors are closed.

In less than 2 years, with only 20% sign up, R30k from members, R30k from city and R50k from people in the neighbourhood to close down informal foot paths into the area we went from 20 to 30 incidents a month to 1 every 2 months in 600+ home neighbourhood. The more well-off neighbourhood next ours the people are to posh to patrol and invested in a R2million camera and numberplate recognition system and their own response vehicle; during the same time they went from 40 to 30 incidents a month.

Also helps a lot if your local SAPS are willing to get involved, our sector WO started a Whatsapp group with one member in each NW in the sector through which alerts are sent out ASAP to coordinate the watches.

[18-Xray]

These are good ideas, thank you :)

[HansSport]

The biggest problems these days are that often too many people are "out to catch the suspects"
1. call saps
2. get a dedicated group to secure the area - stoppers on escape routes. get the people to invest in body armour level III at least.
3. Community should have outside lights on but inside lights off and observe to inform SAPS & security on sightings.
4. Get the community to sign a code of conduct document agreeing to the guidelines and that they will only use a firearm if their life is in danger. Some people think it smart to fire a "warning shot" as stupid as it may sound several narrow escapes with that one.
problem with multiple panic is it might actually cause slow reaction or defeat the object. our community raised money for a flir and night vision to assist as we found the suspects often just went into hiding in an unlit garden until all action stopped and then left quietly...