Last Monday in Awka Capital City of Anambra State, two separate robbery incidents against operators of Point of Sale (POS) business were recorded. In the first one that happened in the morning, a POS operator in Aroma was robbed, at gunpoint, of all she had withdrawn from the bank that morning after which the robbers who came in a tricycle, fired shots into the air and drove off.
The police officers from the nearby B Division, arrived late to do anything. Then some hours later, in the afternoon, a more serious incident took place. Robbers operating in a tricycle shot and robbed another POS operator inside Awka Town and again drove off. The operator was rushed to the hospital.
Just a week earlier, robbers had attacked Rapet, a popular supermarket at Aroma in Awka. They snatched the mobile phones of everyone at the supermarket, including customers and salesgirls. They also took the money realized from sales from the salesgirls before leaving. Has this become the new normal in crime?
One can say that this type of crime is only blossoming because the police and other security agents are not involved in proactive policing. What we usually see are police checkpoints at the usual and known places.
The criminals, knowing where these checkpoints are, usually avoid them and hit in areas where there are no security operatives. They have been doing this and getting away with it and they are thus, becoming more emboldened and defiant. It is now looking like POS operators are becoming an endangered species, as well as medium supermarkets.
While we concede that security agents cannot be everywhere, we think that they will do a much better job if they jettison the idea of camping in particular places and adopt the method of moving about, while maintaining contact with other squads doing same. Crime increases when the security agents’ modus operandi becomes predictable.
For instance, those that robbed at Aroma were well aware that the nearest police checkpoint was at Amawbia Express near the Amawbia Flyover. They were thus very comfortable as they carried out their operation. This is an indictment on the state’s security apparatus.
It is even worse when it is realised that even at those checkpoints, what goes on is extortion, as drivers of commercial vehicles are forced to part with money in a brazen manner, with the police officers there even giving change. Same applies to the state’s Homeland Security arm known as Agunechemba. They pop up at some places, extort drivers and disappear. This is all shades wrong.
With the yuletide at hand, it is expected that criminal activities will double and we expect the security agencies to brace up to the challenge by emplacing proactive measures to safeguard the citizenry. We just can’t keep chasing shadows.
