Bullion van robbery: It will be tough for police to arrest robbers – BPS

The Executive Director of the Bureau of Public Safety, Nana Yaw Akwada says efforts by the police to apprehend culprits in the recent killing of a cop, during the daylight attack on a bullion van on Monday, May 14, 2021, is likely to end fruitless.

He noted that the police only stand a 20 percent chance of arresting and prosecuting the robbers. “These robbers have an 80 percent chance of getting away with the crime and the police having only a 20 percent success rate of arresting them.”

Akwada argues that because of the lapses in intelligence gathering amongst the country’s security agencies, these criminals are likely to go scot-free, “especially as we have not heard anything after the incident. These robbers may have escaped the police’s proximity search by now.”

According to him, the policeman’s death could have been prevented if the Inspector General of Police (IGP) had refused to extend the escort services given to persons and organisations transporting such huge sums after reviewing their mode of transportation, and realising it was unsafe.

“The consideration that a fortified bullion van is expensive and waiting a year and a half to get all of them to upgrade to more efficient and armoured vehicles was wrong.

"Now because of this compromise, lives were lost and the police is also suffering bad press. Money can’t pay for the lives and integrity lost but they are the paramount things that need protection,” he told Samuel Eshun on the Happy Morning Show.

Background

The Accra Regional Police Command have blocked all major roads in the metropolis and peripheral routes as part of a security operation in the Accra metropolis following the shooting of a policeman on a bullion van at James Town in Accra.

In line with the operation, police personnel have been deployed to man checkpoints at vantage points.

The operation started a few minutes after some unidentified robbers on three motorbikes attacked a Man-tran bullion van, used for the collection of daily sales from traders at Adedenkpo in James Town.

The robbers who are said to have fired indiscriminately, shot a policeman on escort duty and killed him, instantly.

A 40-year-old trader was also shot and killed during the incident.

The driver of the bullion van also sustained gunshot wounds and is currently receiving treatment at the Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital while two tellers on the bullion van have also been taken to the same hospital to be treated for trauma.