Armed Robbery Down By 80% - Police

Greater Accra Regional Police Commander Kofi Boakye has disclosed that the spate of armed robbery in the country has reduced by 80%, as compared to that of December last year.

He stated that it is a clear manifestation that armed robbery has gone down but now the whole country is having single digits for the month adding that throughout the nation, the police now get less than 10 reports in a month.

In Accra specifically, he said there are some areas that do not report any incidence of robbery, where previously there occurred between 15 and 18 robberies every week. This shows that the robberies have gone down considerably.

Mr. Kofi Boakye made this statement in an interview with Chronicle on the spate of armed robberies in the country and the issue of land guards.

He attributed the reduction in attacks to the fact that the robbers have been arrested. Almost all the people who were instrumental in these robberies for the past two years have been arrested.

He recalled that four months ago when the service declared about 40 people wanted, they arrested 35 and the five left are now at large.

Last month, only eight cases of armed robbery were recorded as compared to 52 in December last year.

On the allegation that some police personnel know or team up with the armed robbers, the police commander said as a human institution they cannot discount that, giving an example as the incident in Anomabo in which a policeman was associated directly in a robbery.

He was of the view that if "1% of the police population are robbers, then no one can live in the country since it is in every system. We have to strengthen our internal auditing mechanism in order to bring such people to book."

Touching on the issue of land guards, Mr. Boakye said the case of land guards has been a perennial problem and it cannot be looked at in isolation without looking at chieftaincy and land dispute problems.

He stated that in Accra, some land disputes have lasted for ten years and if such cases are sent to the courts whoever wins goes back and sells the land.

He added that at other places where there are three or four chiefs and everyone is selling lands, the question of who the rightful owners are gets compounded.

He called on all Ghanaians who have compact documents and are being harassed to report to the police and take the aggressors to court. But it is up to the court to work expeditiously on land issues so that they have their way clear.

He hinted that as much as the police are not supposed to meddle in land issues, "we have decided to centralize land guard operations at the headquarters so that we can really have central focus in dealing with landguard issues."