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The difficulty with the police setup now is that it is gradually becoming a criminal gang empowered with guns, uniforms and official receipts to commit crime and social violence when in fact, as their motto intimates, it was for service with integrity by keeping the peace, protecting the weak from harm, maintaining law and order and going after perverts and miscreants.
It is not very clear, where things went wrong along the way, whether attributions can entirely be made to the content of their training or its inadequacy or worse training the wrong subjects.
The whole issue appears like a very good software that has been infected with a virus. If not why is suddenly more police officers being arrested for murder, arm robbery, bribery and extortion, incidents of assault and battery, than none police officers ? It is sad that of the criminals in our cells and prisons most of them were arrested while on official police duty.
Even when the motive is not malicious but of good intent the police still get it wrong. For instance they are not able to supervise a peaceful civilian demonstration without brutalizing unarmed women , children and journalist. When they investigate crime, they end up extorting money from the victim and the valiant, when deployed to mann the roads and ensure the comfort of drivers and pedestrians, that is when they punish the drivers by taking money from worse road offenders and setting them free and rather harassing the peaceful road user who will not offer bribe.
Are we not now afraid of police encounter than with known criminals? Because with the police they come to us without our suspecting crime, we open our doors to them and submit to them, only to be done in.
The police administration for the most part has responded to this tragedy with a lot of suspicion and cold feet. Reforms have been very slow in coming and outcomes of investigations into such criminal police conduct has not been made public. Criminal prosecutions of policemen are very slow and shoddy. The worse part is that the IGP maintains his post, including his commanders.
In all of this, citizens still pay more taxes to resource the police force and finance their activities, when in fact, they are coming to do us harm.
Government can do something if it is interested in the plight of the Ghanaian.
It is not enough that the police are subservient to the executive wing of government, and who uses them as their traffic wardens on busy roads, security at home, to even fetch their children from school and stand behind them when delivering speeches.
It must be a concern to our politicians that public office is transient. What will be the nature of their security and those of their family members when they are on retirement or out of government ?
That is why a call on government to sack none performing IGPs who are afraid to introduce reforms that aims at improving policing and its integrity is not a nuisance call. Because one day the ill mannered dog may turn on its master, then there will not be any idle stick to prevent it as it has been cleared by this master to prevent harm on its lovely pet which terrorizes others.
By Benjamin Akyena Brantuo
(My Social Letters )
