Not that it ever gets much easier for our men and women in blue, but this has been a particularly busy, tough, and, one may add, deadly week for the police, especially on the cops-and-robbers front.
Violent as our country is, it is rare that we would have in a space of less than a few days several shootouts between the police and thugs not only armed to the teeth but equipped with the folly to take on the might of the state in a typical brazen manner.
First out of the blocks to the headlines was the shootout at Laudium, a suburb in western Pretoria, where police announced that six men, all suspected cash-in-transit robbers, were shot dead in a skirmish with cops.
A beaming top police officer and spokesperson told a television news crew at the scene, which was still active with bodies of the slain thugs still uncollected, that investigators have been on the tail of the gang since a cash-in-transit robbery in neighbouring Atteridgeville just a week earlier.
The policeman said one of the two cars used by the gang was hijacked in Cleveland, Johannesburg, in December.
Police were still investigating information around the second, which they suspect would not have been legitimately in the hands of the thugs.
It sums up the nature of the crime problem we are facing in this country, where every crime committed is almost always linked to a bigger, grander criminal scheme.
In the case of vehicles hijacked for purposes of robbery, there is often a trail of destruction, such as murder, committed to gain possession of the car.
The car is then used in the commission of more crimes. And so the vicious cycle continues.
Then there was another shootout reported between police and robbers in Butterworth, Eastern Cape, where, again, six citizens of virtue were shot dead after they opened fire on officers.
Here, as was also the case in the Tshwane incident, police recovered unlicensed firearms, which no doubt have been used in the commission of other crimes.
Not to be outdone, KwaZulu-Natal also came to the party, with police reporting a shootout in Ntuzuma, north of Durban, where four men were killed in an exchange of fire with officers. Police said they were let in on the men’s plans to carry out a robbery.
The body of the fifth suspect was found in the vicinity. Police believe he had been shot during an earlier altercation among the bandits before law enforcement arrived.
Two more men were arrested at a hospital where they had gone to seek treatment for injuries sustained in the fight among the thugs.
As per the law, all these incidents will be probed by the Independent Police Investigative Directorate (Ipid), which investigates such matters involving the police.
It is in this light that we are heartened that suspects have been nabbed who will then get the chance to tell their version to Ipid.
That police intelligence work is yielding results is also a source of comfort, given the rampant lawlessness made obvious for all to see by the frequent and brutal crimes of these scumbags.
We cautiously applaud the police for a job well done.
