The Ashanti regional police last week Tuesday gunned down eight suspected highway robbers on the Kumasi-Bekwai road. According to the story, the police got a distress call that the robbers had barricaded the road around midnight, and were robbing passengers of their valuable items. The suspected robbers were said to have first opened fire on the police who were in mufti and driving a civilian car when they got to the crime scene, after refusing to obey orders from the robbers to stop. In the ensuing gun battle, eight out of the twelve robbers lost their lives. The remaining four who sustained gun wound injuries, however, managed to escape. One of the police officers was also hit on the hand by the robbers. There has however been mixed reactions after the police showed the dead bodies of the suspected robbers to newsmen, with some civil society groups accusing the police of using excessive force against the robbers, leading to the killing of the robbers. Their argument is that if the police had managed to arrest the robbers instead of killing them, it would help the police to be able to arrest other armed robbers who are terrorizing Ghanaians. One of God's commandments admonishes us not to kill, therefore killing in whatever form must be condemned. We, therefore, partially support the position of these civil groups that the robbers should not have been killed. Indeed, if the police had managed to arrest them, it would have aided them in their investigations into the armed robbery menace in the country. Whilst supporting the stance of these civil groups, it is equally important to note that the police are also human beings and have children and other dependants, just as members of the civil society groups. It will therefore be wrong to condemn the police without analysing the merits and demerits of the case. The Chronicle does not think the police would be so wicked to just open fire on defenceless robbers to kill them, if their lives had not been threatened first. We believe that if the robbers had surrendered immediately they discovered that those in the civilian car who disobeyed their command to stop were police, they would not have shot to kill them. In fact, if there is verifiable evidence that the police shot and killed the robbers after they had peacefully surrendered to them, the former could be prosecuted for murder, but so far there is no evidence to that. Some few days to the episode of the killing of these robbers, there were news reports that a group of armed robbers had attacked passengers travelling on the Kumasi-Mampong road at night and robbed them of the monies. Theses robbers did not end there but went to the extent of forcing the men in the vehicle to have sex with their female counterparts. We believe that if the relatives or loved ones of these civil society groups were victims of this inhuman treatment, they would not have been shouting on various radio stations their disgust of the killing of the robbers by the police. The Chronicle contends that if the police shot and killed the robbers in self defence, then nobody should raise accusing fingers at them, because they are also human beings. Instead of nailing the police, the so called civil society groups should also use the same energy to educate the general public and the armed robbers about the dangers involved in some of these anti-social vices like armed roberry. You cannot expect the police to treat a person who does not value human life and can take the life of his fellow brother or sister, the same way that they would treat a common criminal. The Chronicle would also like to urge the security agencies to tighten their control at the borders to prevent people from entering into the country to commit crimes. We admit that the ECOWAS protocol allows for free movement of people in the sub-region, but that should not stop us from verifying to know whether the request for a foreigner to enter the country is based on genuine grounds or not. If we fail to check this, more criminals would continue to enter the country under the guise of ECOWAS protocol to wreck havoc on this nation. Source: The Chronicle/Ghana