Police to declare war on land guards (Page 29)

THE police are soon to declare war on land guards who have been terrorising property owners and tenants in some parts of Accra.
Speaking to the Daily Graphic in Accra, the Regional Police Commander, Deputy Commissioner of Police (DCOP), Rose Bio-Atinga, issued a strong warning, but also advised people who operated as land guards within the region to put immediate stop to it, saying “the police will soon get hard on them”.
She said within the next few weeks, a strong team with special orders would be deployed to deal with the situation.
She, therefore, appealed to chiefs and other opinion leaders in communities where the guards operated to advise them, but should not wait till the suspects were arrested before the they come to beg for their release.
DCOP Bio-Atinga said the police had received a number of complaints from people who had fallen victim to the activities of land guards, adding that it was time a lasting solution was found to this menace.
She also pointed out that activities of those guards at Weija and its environs were becoming rampant, a situation she said needed to be handled with all seriousness and with dispatch.
The Regional Police Commander stated that it was rather unfortunate the way those land guards terrorised people, and at times, succeeded in scaring them away from their properties just because they had collected money from other individuals to do their bidding for them.
She took the opportunity to advise all other criminals to desist from indulging in anti-social activities or have themselves to blame.
For his part, the Weija District Police Commander, Assistant Superintendent of Police (ASP), Kwame Gyasi Afari, told the Daily Graphic that a team of police officers from the Accra Region and the Kaneshie Divisional Command would be formed to deal with the land guard menace.
He said after reporting as the new district commander a few days ago, he had received a lot of complaints from residents about the activities of land guards who were making life rather uncomfortable for others.
Explaining how the guards operated in certain areas, ASP Afari said the phenomenon usually arose when landowners sold a portion of land to more than one buyer, and to help one of the buyers to secure that sold land, the buyer had to contract guards to protect it for him or her.
He also pointed out that in some other cases, some chiefs and community leaders deliberately got involved in the double sale of lands and turned to land guards, purposely to scare one of the buyers away.
The district commander explained that those guards used various methods in achieving their aim, which included breaking of walls and other structures, seizure of building tools from workers, extorting money from property owners as well as physically attacking anybody found on lands they thought they were supposed to guard.
ASP Afari added that to avoid finding themselves in any embarrassing situation, chiefs and other community leaders who indulged in selling such property to more than one person should have a change of mind, or else they would eventually find themselves at the wrong side of the law.