the corner office

Bastards. Ronwen's car got stolen this afternoon. From right in front of our front door, while we were both at home. The thieves knocked the complex's security gate off its hinges and shunted it open while two of them hotwired the car. Our neighbour heard the noise and caught them red-handed. They raced the car in Reverse down the driveway, out the gate, and sped off with him sprinting after them.

The Flying Squad and the regular police were here in minutes (kudos to them), got the details and shunted off to look for Ronwen's car (and the getaway car the thieves arrived in - our neighbour managed to get the license number), but no luck. We found out afterwards that the Flying Squad came because the moron who answered the phone when Ronwen called, and who seemed to have a tough time with English, and completely cocked up the car descriptions, thought it was an armed robbery in progress. So the Flying Squad wouldn't have bothered otherwise. Yay.

When we spoke to the on-duty officers who opened the case a little later, they were surprised and mentioned that they'd chased a Jetta (same as the getaway car) half an hour after Ronwen's car had been stolen, just as they'd come on shift. They were following up on the car (why, I don't know) when the people in the Jetta realised the police were behind them and raced away. The cops gave chase, couldn't keep up in their police van, and had to give up. Hello!??!?!?!?!?!

So, not only did these cops not know that the officers they'd just taken over from AND the Flying Squad had been looking for a Jetta driven by known car thieves, but when they see suspicious people who then proceed to RACE away from them, they have to let it slide. Surely every policeman in the vicinity should have been put on alert for Ronwen's car and this Jetta?

I know the answer, sadly. Underresourced, undertrained, understaffed, and disorganised. The police try, but they're not properly equipped. It's a royal mess.

The title of this post is the quip the Police Inspector made as a tension-breaker after he'd opened a case for Ronwen. Naturally, we all laughed. That's what South Africans do.

That's not the worst of it. The hooter went off when they hotwired the car, and I thought it was someone in the complex driveway playing silly buggers. I was elbow-deep in dishes and ignored it. As I mentioned, our neighbour had thought the same thing but went outside to crap on whoever was doing it and caught the thieves reversing down the driveway, and went sprinting after them hurling obscenities. If these bastards didn't reckon they could get away, they could easily have opened fire on him. That apparently happened to two teenagers in Northcliff last week. Both were shot, one of them died. Had I opened our front door on the thieves, would it have saved the car or would they have shot me? When you hear something suspicious, do you investigate or do you lock your doors and pray nothing happens to you?

I mentioned this to the cops and their response was "they'd kill you. Let them take what they want, rather walk away with your life."

Well, they should know. *sigh*