Banks Advised to Keep Their Keys in Police Stations

The Upper West Regional Police Command has advised banks and other financial institutions to submit their keys to police stations for safe-keeping.

The advice followed barely five days after the Regional Police Command arrested a security guard with the Wa Co-operative Credit Union for allegedly faking robbery attack and stealing multiple items belonging to the Union.

“Criminals can go to any extent to commit crime even to the extent of self-inflicting wounds on their bodies, let us take pro-active measures so that we do not fall victims to criminals,” Deputy Upper West Regional Police Commander, DCOP Edward Oduro-Kwateng, said in a statement copied to the Ghana News Agency on Thursday.

“Let us all be security conscious and do not take things for granted, banks and other financial institution are urged to send theirs keys to police stations for safe-keeping,” he added.

The Police also urged the public to be weary of people they employ, particularly as security guards and domestic workers.

He said employers should check thoroughly prospective employees’ backgrounds before engaging them, saying: “The police are there to assist employers to conduct due diligence checks on their employees.”

The police, on 24th February 2018, arrested Benjamin Boah, a night security guard with the Wa Co-operative Credit Union at Wapani in the Wa Municipality for allegedly faking that four armed men with locally manufactured pistols and a knife attacked him.

Boah claimed the robbers blind-folded him, subjected him to severe beatings, wounded him in the process and forcibly took the keys to the transaction hall.

The alleged robbers opened the hall and made away with one 43-inch Samsung TV mounted on the wall and took away Luojia motorbike with registration No. M-16-UW 6055 and two decoders belonging to the Co-operative Union.

The suspect alleged the said robbers tied and abandoned him at Bamahu, a suburb of Wa, but the Police, acting upon intelligence, led to the arrest of Benjamin Boah to retrieve the two decoders and the motorbike from an uncompleted building at Wapani.

The Police further retrieved an HP Laptop, which had been stolen earlier from the Union and a bunch of keys belonging to the Union from the suspect’s room.

The police said their investigations revealed that suspect Benjamin Boah staged the crime alone and that the story that he was attacked and blindfolded by four armed men was false.

The suspect admitted before police that he stole the items with the intention of selling them to further his education.

He was also reported to have self-inflicted wounds on his body.

The Suspect has since been remanded into police custody to appear on Monday, March 5, 2018.

Source: GNA