By DCOP David Senanu Eklu (Rtd)
The recent announcement by the Inspector-General of Police, Mr Christian Tetteh Yohuno, of seven major operational breakthroughs against violent crime deserves commendation.
The Ghana Police Service, particularly the officers involved in the operations, must be applauded for their professionalism, dedication and persistence in producing the results.
The coordinated nature of the operations, involving painstaking intelligence gathering, surveillance and operational action across different parts of the country, demonstrates what focused and intelligence-led policing can achieve.
The successes are especially significant because the operations targeted suspected robbery gangs and persons linked to murder, attacks on bank customers and gold dealers, highway robbery and illegal firearms trading.
Behind the arrests and weapons recoveries were officers who worked, sometimes over several weeks, to piece together information, track suspects and disrupt criminal networks.
Their efforts deserve the appreciation of the public.
However, the breakthroughs provide more than encouraging news about arrests and successful police operations. They also offer an important opportunity to reflect on crime prevention.
Criminals rarely operate in a vacuum. Before many crimes occur, offenders observe people, places and routines. They identify opportunities, study vulnerabilities, obtain information and sometimes test their intended targets.
Intelligence-led policing seeks to understand such patterns, connect information and intervene against criminal networks.
The recent breakthroughs demonstrate the value of that approach. But they also raise an important question for the rest of society: Can a similar preventive mindset be applied before criminals find the opportunity they are looking for?
From police intelligence to everyday prevention
Crime prevention does not mean turning every citizen into a police officer. Neither should people live in fear or become suspicious of everyone around them.
It means becoming more conscious of conditions that can make crime easier to commit.
One useful approach is Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design (CPTED), which is based on the principle that the way people design, use and manage their physical environment can either increase or reduce opportunities for crime.
For example, a poorly illuminated entrance to a business premises, an overgrown area providing concealment, an uncontrolled rear entrance to a workplace, or a car park where people cannot easily observe who enters and leaves can create opportunities for criminals.
None of these conditions causes crime, but each can be exploited by a suspect.
CPTED encourages natural surveillance, access control, territorial responsibility and proper maintenance.
In practical terms, this means making it easier to see what is happening, making it harder for people to enter places unnoticed, establishing clear responsibility for spaces and removing environmental conditions that provide convenient opportunities for crime.
Looking at the environment differently
This is where the recent police breakthroughs become relevant beyond the arrests themselves.
Reports on some of the cases indicate that victims or potential targets included bank customers, gold dealers, mobile money operators and highway users.
These activities are different, but they share one important characteristic: criminals need information and opportunity before they can act.
A bank customer carrying a large amount of cash may be observed and followed. A business with predictable cash-movement routines may become easier to study. A poorly controlled workplace entrance may allow strangers to observe activities without attracting attention.
The preventive response, however, is not to blame victims. Responsibility for crime rests with offenders.
The purpose of prevention is to deny criminals easy opportunities.
Banks and other businesses can examine visibility around entrances, parking areas and adjoining streets. Security personnel should look beyond the gate and pay attention to unusual observations or repeated presence around the premises.
Organisations handling cash or valuables should regularly review how predictable their routines have become.
Communities can identify dark spots, abandoned structures, overgrown areas and poorly observed routes that create opportunities for concealment.
Property owners can improve lighting, visibility and access control, while residents can become more willing to report genuinely suspicious behaviour rather than assuming that somebody else will do so.
These may appear to be small interventions, but collectively, they can strengthen the environment in which professional policing operates.
Prevention as a shared responsibility
The recent successes of the Ghana Police Service demonstrate what patient intelligence gathering, coordination and operational action can achieve.
They should reassure the public that criminal networks can be identified, tracked and disrupted.
The next opportunity is to complement that effort with intelligence-led prevention.
The Police need information. Organisations need better protective systems. Communities need environments that discourage crime, while citizens need practical awareness without becoming fearful.
Crime prevention, therefore, begins with a simple habit: looking at familiar surroundings occasionally through the eyes of someone searching for an opportunity.
What would such a person notice that we have stopped noticing?
In Part Two, the focus will move from the environment to everyday behaviour and examine practical steps that banks, financial institutions, customers, businesses, mobile money operators, gold dealers, motorists, households and communities can take to make themselves less attractive targets without turning daily life into a security operation.
The objective is not to create fear. It is to see the signs early, reduce opportunities for crime and act safely.
(David Senanu Eklu is the Executive Director of the MISORNU Safety Center, a public service NGO. He was also the Director-General of Police Public Affairs).
