Chief Executive Officer of the Africa Centre for Security and Intelligence Studies (ACSIS), Paul Coonley Boateng, has warned people against attacking law enforcement officers in uniform.
He asserted that when officers of the various security services are attacked while they are in uniform, they feel belittled and disrespected, which causes them to respond as the military did during the Ashaiman swoop.
Paul Coonley Boateng explained in an interview with Neat FM on March 8, 2023, that the military’s actions also signal the nation’s crime-prone areas to desist from their bad behaviours.
“I’m not surprised,” he said of the swoop before adding: “because for the security services, wherever things like this (attack) happen, we must expect collateral damage.
“We witnessed a similar incident at Denkyira Obuasi. And it is not about the military alone that engages in actions like this. All the security services in uniform do the same when a colleague of theirs is attacked in uniform.
“When such things happen, they feel belittled and disrespected because they’re protecting us. They’ve undergone thorough training to defend us, so for a civilian to have that courage and murder one of them, it becomes a headache for the service,” he said in explaining the action of the military at Ashaiman.
Some soldiers invaded Ashaiman in the early hours of March 7, apparently in search of the murderers of their young colleague.
Several videos of the incident, captured by some residents, went viral on social media. In some of these videos, personnel are seen hitting and brutalising those who were outside.