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."