Chief Executive Officer (CEO) at the Africa Centre for Security and Intelligence Studies, Paul Boateng expects armed robbery and kidnapping case in the country to rise exponentially.
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According to him, most cases of kidnapping in the country have gone unreported and believes such cases are more than reported ones.
The Security Expert asserts that per research conducted by his outfit and shared with the police, the trend of kidnapping will keep on rising. “We informed the police of this rise in June. Most of these kidnapping cases have to do with the sale of body parts and organs, and targets for these kidnappers are teenagers.”
He posits that these syndicates kidnap unsuspecting teens and pregnant women to harvest their body parts and babies for sale in the Arab world.
Paul Boateng who has handled over 4 cases of kidnapping in the past few weeks noted that some of these kidnappers rape their victims and dump them elsewhere when they do not get what they want. “The missing person’s case has been on the rise and we have been speaking about it. I have handled 4 kidnapping cases and in the recent one, the young girl was kidnapped at Abeka and dumped at Cantoments on Thursday after she was raped. These 4 girls all refused to report the case because they feared the stigma and how it could ruin their marriages.”
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In an interview with Samuel Eshun on the Happy Morning show, he charged the police to develop an intelligence based security system to help prevent such crimes adding, “As Ghanaians, we also have a role to play and not leave our security in the hands of security agencies only. We should not just rent out buildings to suspicious people and those who only work or go out at night.”
He also advised parents to pay special attention to their children and consider their security a priority. “If we don’t take care we will be afraid to let our children leave home on their own.”
“Studies we have undertaken show that the cases of kidnapping will keep on rising,” he reiterated.
He attributed the influx of these kidnappers and organ harvesters to “Ghana’s seemingly loose security structure. They think they have the peace to operate and will go scot free whenever they commit a crime. They are here because they feel Ghanaians are hospitable and the young Ghanaian also joins them because of our high rate of unemployment.”
Paul Boateng also claims these syndicates have found their way into the security and political arena. “They contribute to these political parties and security agencies and when they are in trouble, they are released or their crimes ignored.”
Sharing ideas on how to combat crime he advised the police to focus on community oriented policing. “The public-police cooperation is not there and I blame the police because they communicate with the public poorly. They need to communicate with the public in a receptive manner so they trust them.”
With a well advanced environmental scanning and tooling, he also believes the police can identify hotspots for crime and largely prevent crime.