Unresolved murder cases and lack of resources increasing killings – Adib Sani

Executive Director of Jatikay Centre for Human Security and Peace Building, Adid Sani has expressed his disappointment in Ghana’s approach to security issues.

He said the current approach to the issues is not the best.

He added that, the lack of commitment from the political class and also the leadership of the Ghana Police Service to resource the service is also causing delays in dealing with the increasing rate of unresolved crimes in the country.

“One thing we need to be aware of is the fact that the increasing rate of murder in Ghana is not a recent phenomenon in the past few years has been going up as a matter of fact, in 2017, it went up by over 600 Ghanaians ,look at the situation, it is so bad that even the US Department of states in the year 2019 and 2020 travel advisory report about Ghana has indicated categorically that violent crime is on the increase in Ghana. And the murder rate is also going up.

“One of the biggest challenges we have had to confront is the issue of investigation. It will interest you to note that most of the processes involved in investigation is manual. We lack the systems because there’s no commitment on the side of the politicians, and on the size of the top edges of the Ghana police service.”

Data from The Criminal Investigation Department (CID) of the Ghana police service indicates that between January and June 2021, only one out of 306 murder cases has seen closure.

Adib Sani says one way to improve the process of investigation is to make good use of biometric database by integrating them with our system to dealing with crime.

“The biometric database, we have them my brother, national identification authority is a biometric database. Voters register is also biometric. Then we have the passport office, health insurance, when we integrate the systems, it is going to help us and the most distressing bit of it is, he added; . And believe it or not someone who perpetrated crime

“In Tamale, he is arrested, he is incarcerated for some time that person is released, he comes to Accra. and perpetrate the same crime, and re-arrested by the Accra and they don’t know that this is a repeat offender.

“You know, in the US, for example, the police they move with every information in their cruiser. So by having access to your social security number, or your driver’s license, they can go into the police vehicles and every information about you is there whether you are on the run, a fugitive, you have an indictment on your head or you have violated your parole. All of this information is there. This is no rocket science.

“So our ability to invest in those systems is what is accounting for the increasing phenomenon of murders in the country. Apart from that training, you don’t use a 20th century approach to countering crime in 21st century, I mean, you’ll be making a fool of yourself. And most of these offices, they receive training at the point of recruitment. And that is it. And you know, yesterday’s insecurity is not as the DNS changes is dynamic. So it mostly the criminals are a step ahead of them.”

Mounkaila Abdoul-Razak Hassane

Read Full Story