"Honeymoon days for land guards are over - Police warns

Accra, July 26, GNA - The Police and other security agencies have resolved to clamp down on the activities of land guards and illegal possession of arms saying, "the honeymoon days are over".

Briefing the press on Thursday in Accra, Mr Jonathan Yakubu, the Director General in-Charge of Police Operations said in collaboration with the military and other security agencies, the activities of those groups would be "crushed once and for all." He said henceforth, activities of land guards in all forms had been stopped and warned that very soon the security agencies would descend on perpetrators of the nuisance.

Mr Yakubu described land guards and their financiers as nation-wreckers causing misery to people and said both were offenders of the law.

"The term invariably evokes imageries of fear, torture, pain and death. This is as a result of the activities these miscreants called land guards engage in.

".The truth is that the phenomenon is unconstitutional and criminal," he added.

He said land guards were noted for possessing illegally acquired weapons which they used to inflict pain and harm or even cause death to their victims.

Mr Yakubu further stated that it was illegal for any individual or body to form a private security organisation, unless expressly permitted by the law adding, "a war has been declared on the phenomenon, which will spare no party to the canker, be they chiefs, traditional entities, financiers or actors."

Quoting the Police Service Regulations, 1992 (L.I 1571), he said the right to establish an organisation to perform services such as watching, guarding, patrolling or carriage for the purpose of providing protection against crime, should only be sought through the issuance of license by the Interior Ministry.

"By this L.I, no private security organisation has the right to arm its personnel," he stated.

He regretted that unregistered vehicles and motorbikes had become a conduit through which most crimes such as robbery and murder in the metropolis were committed.

Mr Yakubu entreated those who were under threat from land guard activities or were embroiled in land litigation, bordering on land guards to report to the Property Fraudulent Unit of the Police Service.