Should Robbers Be Killed ? (Spread)

THE killing of eight suspected armed robbers in Kumasi yesterday following a shoot-out with the police has attracted varied responses from the general public and rekindled the debate on what constitutes effective deterrence to violent crime in the country.
While some members of the public applauded the police for the courageous manner in which they dealt with the situation and suggested that the officers involved should be rewarded, two security experts are not excited by the approach of the police and have called for maximum circumspection on their part in undertaking such operations.
Five out of eight people who were randomly selected in Accra for their views on the issue were in favour of applying capital punishment on armed robbers.
Six of the interviewees told the Daily Graphic that they had been victims of armed robbery in their homes, vehicles or in the open, usually at night.
Forty-four-year old Ms Abena Nyarko, who said she was robbed of her bag and personal belongings at gunpoint about a week ago at Abeka Free Pipe, said, “Robbers are killers and must be killed.”
She said she was nearly killed when a driver whose taxi she had boarded pleaded with her to allow a supposed friend to join the taxi.
She said the two pulled out guns on the way, took away her bag containing money and a mobile phone and pushed her out of the moving vehicle.
A former employee of the Ghana Education Service (GES), Mr Nathan Amartey, said, “Anybody who steals and goes on to kill deserves to be killed.”
Mr Amartey, who said his wife was wounded during a robbery attack in Dansoman some few months ago, said if the law continued to protect such criminals, the citizens would have no other option but take the law into their own hands and lynch such people.
Mr Albert Sackey, a 52-year-old security man, prescribed life imprisonment for armed robbers to prevent them from coming out to continue with their callous behaviour.
He, however, called on the courts to be swift with their judgement in armed robbery cases and added that investigations into such cases should be deep to expose other gang members.
An Assistant Public Relations Officer, Ms Margaret Okine, lamented over the incidence of too many robbery cases in the country and called for speedy trials and the imposition of the death sentence on those who indulged in the act.
“Why should the law protect them, since they sometimes kill people after they have stolen from them? They are not humans and do not deserve to live,” she stated.
An employee of a private security company, Ms Rita Asare, said it was wrong “for people who only come to steal and kill” to be allowed to enjoy life.
A middle-aged man who wanted to remain anonymous said all his woes were due to the activities of armed robbers who attacked him about four years ago and took away GH¢600 he was using for his business.
He said he developed goose pimples anytime he heard of armed robbers and stressed that anybody found robbing another person with weapons did not deserve to live.
Mr P.K. Nyame, who said he once had an experience with gun-wielding robbers at a distribution point of Guinness Ghana Limited in Accra, said such criminals should be put behind bars for life.
Two young female friends called for life imprisonment in hard labour for convicted armed robbers.
While one said she was attacked and nearly robbed at the entrance of her gate, the other said her sister was attacked at a traffic intersection with a sharp knife and robbed.
The criminologist and human rights lawyer, Prof Ken Attafuah, and the Head of the Conflict Management, Prevention and Resolution Department of the Kofi Annan International Peacekeeping Training Centre, Dr Kwesi Anning, said shooting, in circumstances such as the one in which the Kumasi police found themselves, should be applied as a last resort.
They also disagreed with the imposition of the death penalty on convicted armed robbers because that form of punishment was not absolute in deterrence.
According to Prof Attafuah, those who held the deadly force of state had a greater responsibility to be circumspect.
He said without condemning the police for their action, it had to be made clear that the first duty of the police was to protect property and lives, including the lives of suspected criminals and aggressors.
He said in the course of discharging that responsibility, the police were at liberty to use reasonable force determined in terms of proportionality, adding that the force applied by the police ought to be proportional to the threat encountered.
“If someone shoots at you with a pistol and you use an AK47 rifle to riddle him, you have not acted proportionately,” he contended.
Prof Attafuah said the rules of engagement in a face-to-face combat imposed a responsibility on a combatant to shoot to kill only if his or her life was threatened.
He said it was for that reason that the police were trained to shoot to maim, instead of kill.
He cited the Taifa and Dansoman shooting incidents in which the police came under severe public criticism for shooting and killing innocent individuals they mistook for criminals.
He said the police ought to understand that they were subject to the principle of accountability for any person they killed.
Commenting on the application of the death penalty, Prof Attafuah said that form of punishment was not the solution to violent crime, adding that its deterrent effect was more imaginary than real.
He said there were clear indications that in countries such as Canada where the death penalty had been abolished, the rate of violent crime was low, whereas in countries such as Nigeria and South Africa where the death penalty was applied, the rate of violent crime was still high.
Commenting on the killing of the suspected armed robbers in Kumasi, Dr Anning said once a person attacked a police officer unlawfully, the officer had the right to defend himself.
He, however, said in circumstances where the police shot and killed suspected armed robbers, even when they (robbers) had laid down their arms, the police could not be justified in their action.
Dr Anning said where suspected armed robbers were fleeing police encounter, it was more appropriate for the police to aim at the legs of the suspects and shoot to maim, rather than kill, because the latter option was against the rules of war.
He expressed concern over the attempt to link the suspected armed robbers to a particular ethnic group, saying, “That is playing up to ethnic sentiments which are already high in the country.”
“This is a dangerous anthropological argument,” he added, explaining that it was the argument akin to the philosophy of anthropologists who looked at the colour of a person’s skin to conclude that whites were more intelligent than blacks.
Dr Anning said linking crime with ethnicity had the tendency of making the police lose sight of other criminals who might be lurking around.
“Criminals are criminals and they must be dealt with as such, not by ethnic considerations,” he insisted.
Otherwise, he added, an innocent person could be mistaken for a criminal and shot based on his ethnicity.
On the death penalty, Dr Anning said he did not believe in that form of punishment because it was possible for convicts to reform and so it was not right to kill such persons.