Take Ownership of Locked Files in Ubuntu

I recently installed a program through dpkg and then removed it with the dpkg -r command. However, I encountered some issues with folder permissions. The program I installed also created a security group which my username was not a part of. To take ownership of the files and remove them, I issued these commands:

• Navigate to the directory above the locked directories.
• chown -hR username /foldername

This changed the ownership of the folder and subfolders to my username, thus allowing me to remove the files.
*Note: If you are not logged in as root, then you will use the sudo prefix.