Pubdate: Sun, 23 May 2004
Source: Sunday Times (South Africa)
Copyright: 2004 Times Media Ltd
Contact:  http://www.suntimes.co.za
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1335
Author: Karen Van Rooyen

CLEAN UP THAT DRUG DEN!

Headmistress Says Run-Down House Next To School Is Being Used As Base By 
Drug Dealers

The headmistress of one of Joburg's poshest girls' schools is at her wits' end.

Pat Brink, principal of Kingsmead College in Melrose where fees go up to 
R45 000 a year, is convinced the run-down house next door to the school is 
being used for drug dealing but is frustrated that she has been unable to 
put a stop to it.

Police confirmed that they had raided the house, and found drugs.

A Metro investigative team which staked out the house this week confirmed 
Brink's fears: reporters were offered drugs on two occasions.

Watching from the school property, the team noticed several men loitering 
in the house's yard, which was strewn with rubbish.

Metro was approached on two separate occasions by different dealers. The 
first time a young man ran after our car, from Oxford Road to Baker Street 
where he offered us dagga. Both dealers who made the offers were operating 
from in front of the house.

But the owners of 128 Oxford Road cannot be traced, meaning that little can 
be done to get the loiterers off the property.

"We are very concerned because we have children here until very late at 
night," said Brink.

"At the end of last term, one of our girls was harassed by one of them. I 
don't know if they tried to sell her drugs..."

Brink said the drug dealing had been a problem for two years but had 
recently become worse.

Police from both Norwood and Rosebank want to see the occupants removed and 
have conducted a number of raids on the house.

"We want to eliminate the problem ... just get rid of it," said Captain 
Gerhard Steyn, head of crime pre vention at the Rosebank station.

Brink said the drug dealing occurred on Baker Street which runs off Oxford 
Road. She said she - and other members of staff - had often witnessed drugs 
being sold on the corner of Baker and Oxford streets, and in Baker Street.

"I don't know whether they are running it from the house, and the people 
selling just come every day and do their bit, but there is definitely a 
connection between the drugs being sold and the house," she said.

"When we have looked into the property, people were always lying around in 
an old empty swimming pool."

Police have raided the house six times in the last two months. They have 
found dagga on the premises, but never in large enough quantities to keep 
the suspects behind bars for long.

Inspector Luitha Jansen van Rensburg of Norwood Police Station said police 
started focusing on the property in August last year, but had not been able 
to contact the owners.

"If we can get a letter from the owners giving us permission to do so, we 
can arrest them for trespassing," she said.

Steyn said the raids had yielded a person suspected of involvement in a 
housebreaking five years ago, but that they had not been as successful with 
their drug busts.

He said the house was an eye-sore. "When property owners leave their 
property like that, they're only inviting criminals."

Barbara Jensen, spokesman for the new high-speed railway link, Gautrain, 
confirmed the company was interested in expropriating two properties on the 
corner of Baker Street, one of them the house concerned.

"Those two are the only two we have identified for expropriation and they 
will be used as an entrance to the station underground," she said.

Kingsmead parent and old girl Robyn Cameron said the situation around the 
house had become "thoroughly unpleasant".

"The house has got to a point of such neglect that nobody takes note of who 
goes in and out."
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MAP posted-by: Keith Brilhart