Dr. Jones Opoku-Ware, a criminologist and lecturer at Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, believes that the publication of images of the vehicle and other facts from the Adabraka armed robbery incident demonstrates that we are making progress.
Instead of condemning the Ghana Police Service for its response to the armed robbery, he believes we should congratulate and support them.
Dr. Opoku-Ware noted that crime response even in the advanced world takes time, and Ghana was no exception.
Citing the United States of America, he stated that their crime response timing is 11 minutes, and in some cases, by the time they arrive, the criminals may have escaped.
“Based on my research, I don’t want to place too much blame on the police for their response time. When it comes to police response time and the literature, even in New York and other areas, it ranges from eight to eleven minutes. It is based on various criteria that aid police response to situations. Look at our roadways and how they have been designed. Obstacles on our roads. The police struggle to get through, which occasionally affects their response time.”
He said in the case of Ghana, we have a poor road network, with traders and hawkers hawking along our roads, making it difficult for our security services to adequately respond to emergency cases.
“In moving forward as a country, these are some of the issues we have to deal with. The encroachment on our roads, the unlawful parking, and other obstacles that prevent our security agencies from attending to emergencies must be addressed. We should support the police in discharging their duties. We sometimes blame the police over issues, but we forget that there were obstacles that may have affected the way the work was done.
Let’s be frank with ourselves; even ambulances, we call them to attend to emergencies; look at how they struggle to go through traffic when transporting sick people to the hospitals. So these are the issues we have to address so we don’t have to always blame the police.”
He emphasised that the police are making good use of the cameras put across our streets, which will assure their efficiency.
He proposed the deployment of more cameras in our communities since that would help in fighting and minimising crime.
“I believe that once we have these things in place, we will be able to locate the armed robbers, pin them down, and capture them. These offenders dwell in the community, and if we can find them, we will be able to arrest them. We cannot allow them to get their way. Perhaps we might place more cameras in the neighbourhoods themselves.
The ones we have are on the roadside, but can we get some of them in the communities? We can trace their movements until the very final destination. If cameras are there, we can trace them to their homes and arrest them, he stated.
By: Rainbowradioonline.com/Ghana