The rapidity of urbanization in Ghana like many sub-Saharan Africa countries tends to overstretch the capacity of the state to provide urban infrastructure and services, including policing services. Concurrently, growing informality and increasing unemployment are associates of accelerated, unplanned and disordered urbanization. Successively, low-income and low-investment ostensibly make urbanization offers neither decent dwelling places nor productive work environments which potentially generate criminal tendencies. Hence, with an overall increase (93%) of reported cases of murder, assault, armed robbery, theft and narcotics from 1980 to 2010, the Ghana Police Service appears incapacitated translating to uncertainty about the geographies of their operations: where and whose life and property are adequately protected, and uncertainty about how the unprotected secure themselves. Using exploratory sequential mixed method and critical realist perspective, this study unpacks this conundrum and explores the role of informal crime prevention strategies in complementing the provision of urban security in Kumasi and Tamale.