Thabong police’s ‘No Knives’ road show a success

More than 300 community members of Thabong in Welkom participated in this year’s annual ‘no knives’ road show, which ended on a high note last week in Sector 4 at Ditsheng section.

The campaign started last year towards the festive season, with the slogan, ‘no knives saves lives’ whose aim is to discourage community members from participating in criminal activities during the upcoming holidays.

“The purpose of the campaign was to create awareness about hot spots in the different sectors and to encourage community members to become more pro-active and not reactive during the festive season by reporting crimes. Community members were discouraged from taking the law into their own hands.

“A number of cases that have been reported showed different crime patterns in the different sectors, and possession of dangerous weapons and offences that were liquor-related seemed to be on the increase,” said police spokesperson, Captain Stephen Thakeng.

This year, the Thabong South African police used a ‘no knives’ sculpture as a symbol of the campaign.

Thakeng said the acting head of VISPOL, Lieutenant-Colonel Moleleki Matsabu, the Community Policing Forum (CPF) chairperson, Serake Leeuw and Captain Mofumahadi Senatle of Sector 4 and her team, attended the event.

Leeuw encouraged the public to join CPF structures and take part in sector projects aimed at fighting crime.

“The sculpture, also known as the “face of the campaign” portrays a man made out of the knives standing on top of a coffin that is also made of knives. The coffin contains other loose knives.

“More than 5 000 knives were used to build the sculpture and all the knives used were collected from murder scenes and from suspects who were arrested for possession of dangerous weapons while others were handed in at the police station by law-abiding community members.”

Matsabu encouraged the community to take ownership of their space and squeeze the space for criminal activity.

He said the ‘no knives’ campaign is on-going and called on the public to hand in any dangerous weapons at their nearest police station.