Ghanaian Times: Make armed robbery unattractive

It is sad that even without contacting the police for the statistics, we can confidently say armed robbery cases in the country are on the ascendency.

This is because on daily basis, we hear or read news about robbery cases. For instance, yesterday the Ghanaian Times published an incident in which armed robbers killed a security man at a filling station at Ashongman in Accra and robbed the station, while the Daily Graphic carried a news item that the police had launched a manhunt for two policemen suspected to have robbed two Burkinabes of $209,172.

Armed robbery is not an act in which victims are just deprived of their possessions. In some cases victims are killed, maimed or traumatized, sometimes for life. Even some non-victims get traumatized when they hear news about robbery. The other thing is that armed robbery takes considerable media space and precious time of all of us to the negligence of important things.

The motive of armed robbers is to get money and most of them use the money to buy drugs, and indulge in acts they consider pleasurable, with a few having the intention of enhancing their social status by way of dressing well, buying cars or acquiring landed property.

Armed robbery incidents usually occur on highways and in commercial entities like banks and supermarket but in Ghana today, even people doing petty businesses are robbed. Cases in question have to do with recent robbing of mobile money vendors, where some have been killed. The robbers in Ghana now are so unsympathetic to the extent attacking an ambulance, killing the driver and robbing a pregnant woman of GHc700.

Some studies have it that armed robbers prefer isolated and dark places, but recent happenings seem not to support this intoto.

The courts have been punishing armed robbers with various jail terms, yet the perpetrators undertake their criminal acts with impunity.

The Ghanaian Times believes that it is about the time our security establishment found out the real motive of these nation wreckers beyond what we already know.

Also, the establishment should educate the public on how well we can stay safe from robbers.

It is about time, the nation enacted laws to deal with armed robbery and other crimes.

For instance, there should be a law to call for probe into people’s sources of wealth without them resisting the move.

Also, convicted criminals should be made to serve in their communities and hardened criminals like armed robbers should be kept at places of no escape because news of armed robbers having jumped jail is scary.

The Ghanaian Times believes that no country would have a zero-crime situation but the security establishment and the courts can make armed robbery and other crimes unattractive to perpetrators and potential ones.