Dr Vladimir Antwi-Danso, the dean at the Ghana Armed Forces Command and Staff College has expressed worry over the spate of mob actions in Ghana.
Antwi-Danso’s comment comes after irate youth attacked a police station in Nkoranza over the alleged killing of Albert Donkor by some cops.
Donkor was picked up at his mother’s residence at Kasadjan in the Nkoranza Municipality by the police on 25 April, on suspicion of being involved in a robbery that had occurred on the Nkoranza-Kintampo road.
Reacting to the development on The Asaase Breakfast Show with Kwaku Nhyira-Addo on Thursday (19 May), Antwi-Danso said mob action must be urgently addressed before it escalates.
Don’t destroy evidence
“Why would we pounce on the police, when maybe as an institution they have gone wrong and it exacerbates the situation and more deaths occur? If we are comparing what happened in Black Lives Matter, you will see that even though people were even around when the police were killing George Floyd, they were only taking pictures to get evidence.
“They didn’t pounce on the police to kill them, they didn’t go to any police station to go and torch the station, they didn’t destroy documents, if you attack the police station, you destroy evidence of other criminal activities,” the security analyst said.
“So, I think from our part, we also need to have introspection, what should the nation do to address mob action, where people take the law into their own hands does not become part of our live, it is becoming too much, the slightest thing people want to take the law into their own hands, and that is lawlessness, and most of us are worried,” he said.
Antwi-Danso called for a cordial relationship between the civilians and the police to protect the prevailing peace in the country.
“The police have their own standard operating procedures. It’s built under crowd control rules, so they know what they do when they have crowd control. Unfortunately, some of such controls become rowdy or go bad and when they do, we have casualties.
“But we always assume trying to think that the police use massive force and they are wrong, which is the case actually, but from the other angle I don’t think Ghana we are looking at that, …the need for the public to know that public police relationship must be cordial,” he added.
Listen to Dr Vladimir Antwi-Danso in the attached file below:
Fred Dzakpata
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