Accra Regional Police Commander, Kwaku Ayensu Opare-Addo, has described Tuesday’s ‘Yeewuo’ demonstration by the Committee for Joint Action as absolutely peaceful.

He told Joy News that the police, who numbered about 700, made a difference in contributing to the peaceful nature of the six-hour long demonstrations against harsh economic conditions.

He said contrary to widely held views that the police’s earlier concerns about the likelihood of the demonstration turning violent, was never misplaced since some members of the demonstrators had threatened to arm and defend themselves should they come under any attack.

Demonstrators were orderly

	A section of the demonstrators

“The difference was the involvement of the police. We had a sizeable number of police officers including senior police officers and we were able to meet the demands of security during the march. We were about 700, a little over 700 as against the numbers that came, a little over 1000 that we had to grapple with.”

DCOP Opare-Addo who was speaking on Joy News programme, Newsnite on Tuesday, said all the 700 policemen had come from Accra, and looking at the varied background of the demonstrators with ‘some commandeered Chorkor, from other places in Accra, from Nima, from Nsawam and even from Kumasi’, the police could not have underestimated the security challenges.

“We were out to contain the situation, we had the capacity to contain them but they acted in a way that nobody could say that they never did what was right. They comported themselves, we led them through the march, we shepherded them through without any difficulty at all.”