As infrastructure is stripped and sold to corruptible scrapyards, metal theft costs the City of Cape Town millions of rand. To combat the scourge, a highly trained dog with a particular skill for sniffing out copper has been deployed.
Also read: The City’s Copperheads crack down on metal theft
Speaking to News24, the City’s Mayoral Committee Member for Safety and Security, JP Smith, claimed that Cape Town lost around R2.5 million to metal theft in the fourth quarter of 2022.
If unaccounted-for stolen scrap is factored in, the true cost of metal theft could be up to three times higher.
According to Smith, the national government’s six-month ban on the export of copper and copper alloy scrap, announced in November, has done little to halt infrastructure destruction.
“The prohibition on the trade in copper that was authorised by the national government has not had any impact. The guys on the street tell us that the situation is as bad as before,” he said.
Cape Town’s fight against metal theft recently received an unexpected boost from the K9 Unit.
Jackson, a seven-year-old pit bull crossbreed, can detect copper wire hidden beneath other metals or buried in shallow ground.
“Jackson is quite unique. When I first had Jackson and his predecessors introduced him to me, I was very cynical about the idea that a dog could smell copper,” Alderman Smith told News24 during a search operation in Culemborg.
A week earlier, thieves attempted to conceal a stolen metal rail in the area but were caught on CCTV footage.
Smith recalled meeting Jackson for the first time and losing a bet by burying a copper sample in a molehill, which the dog was able to detect.
Cape Town police are looking to add more copper-sniffing dogs to their K9 Unit, with Smith confirming that training capabilities had recently been brought in-house and that the kennels in Parow would be upgraded.
“We are currently working on increasing and improving the kennels. We’ve run out of kennel capacity at that unit, which is a former animal welfare facility that we took over,” he said.
Alderman Smith added that they have begun to set aside funds and design enhanced kennels so that they can provide the best possible care for the dogs. He said that they treat them like they would the officers, as respected members of the unit.
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Picture: Screenshot / YouTube
