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Partly blame the Ghana police for the spate of crimes going on in the country

Feature Article Partly blame the Ghana police for the spate of crimes going on in the country
JUN 21, 2021 LISTEN

The Ghana police service, although is doing a great service to the nation and the people, the police can’t exonerate themselves from the spate of crimes, especially the armed robberies that are going on in the country. They are partly culpable for the ramifications of crimes in the country and the emboldening of criminals to brazenly commit crimes in broad daylight with impunity.

It is a fact some police officers, although few they may be, have been caught directly involving themselves in armed robberies. There is evidence to this assertion I am making already in the public domain. When it comes to openly shamelessly taking bribes from motorists on the roads, the police officers are expert criminals.

If police officers, who are the law themselves and law enforcers, turn to breach the laws, then the nation has a big problem. Lawlessness and propensity to commit crimes by potential criminals will be the order of the day. No wonder that crimes are festering in the nation like vermin.

A police officer is to protect lives, prevent crimes from being committed in the first place and to protect property. When someone harms another person, or commits a crime or destroys another person’s property, the police must arrest the person and put him or her before the court to be prosecuted. What if the police officers are themselves deeply involved in the committal of such heinous criminal acts?

For not wasting any one’s time, let the public be aware how COP Nathan Kofi Boakye, a top police officer aspiring assiduously to become a future Inspector General of Police (IGP) in Ghana, if I am right, is on recorded video being supportive of, and defending, police corruption. He claims the police taking bribes of one, one, Cedis on the road is nothing compared with the corruption committed by politicians, traditional chiefs and those in higher positions in state institutions. He therefore rubbishes any accusations of corruption or wrongdoing levelled against the police based on the roadside bribery they obviously carry out on daily basis. For him, it is nothing. Rubbish!

If a police officer talks that trash, he deserves not to be a law enforcer. Is he not by his pronouncement and actions encouraging the police and other people to commit crimes?

The IGP Mr Bonuah claims it is only in heaven that crimes cannot be committed but not here on earth and in Ghana. This statement by him is very unfortunate. He should have answered whatever question was posed to him following the assault on the bullion van that led to the death of the police escort and some passers-by much more sensibly than acting on the spur of the moment to answer it thoughtlessly. By his thoughtless response, it goes to confirm how the police may not care much if people committed crimes or not, since the inhabitants on earth are prone to commit crimes.

There is a video in which an assemblyman in a town in the Western region alleges that some criminals who come to his area to cut and remove rails (one of the two metal bars attached to the ground on which trains travel) from the rehabilitated or newly constructed railway lines, when they are arrested and handed over to the police, they are almost immediately set free by the police. The thieves often come from the Takoradi area.

https://youtu.be/iM8ChMI4H6U

What signal are the police sending out to the public, especially, the criminals? The thieves are not only stealing the rails to take to scrapyards in Takoradi to sell for scrap but also, ruining the government’s efforts to rehabilitate the railway transportation in the country. Just imagine how much the government has pumped into the construction of the railways only to have selfish crooks to sabotage the government’s plans and by extension, the railway network. By their attitude, they are endangering commuters’ lives through derailment of trains should the damaged/stolen rails not be detected and repaired before a train reaches that portion of the railway line.

Such police officers failing to charge the perpetrators of rails theft to court should be investigated and punished. They are not helping the nation. They may be in league with the thieves, sharing the proceeds from the sale of the scrap hence their quickness to release the thieves when reported and arrested without pressing charges against them.

Last but not the least on my list of doubts about the Ghana police credibility is about the four or so young men recently seen in a video toting guns and threatening Ghanaians. This said video came out immediately after the fatal robbery of a bullion van in Accra in which the escort police officer and two passers-by were killed with others injured by the armed robbers in a broad daylight. The posture of the men in the video, their threatening pronouncements, display of deadly weapons and money, made the public suspect them of being those who robbed the bullion van.

A day or so later, another video came out in which the young men were dissociating themselves from armed robbery and the incident of the bullion van. They invoked river gods and other fetishes to curse those blaming them for armed robbery. A day after the second video emerged in the public domain, another one came out where a TV/radio station had arranged to interview the suspected armed robbers live in Obuasi.

When the radio presenter, the interviewer, contacted the police about the men, the police chief at the station was furious. He queried why the presenter did not come to see the police first before visiting the men? The police chief said they had been looking for the men for the past three years but had not been able to find them to arrest.

What a cock and bull story by the police officer to take Ghanaians for fools. The men had been in Obuasi all this while that the Obuasi police claim to have declared them wanted, yet they could not find them. The truth is, if the radio presenter had contacted the police before seeing the men, the police would have alerted the men to escape. That is certain.

From the forgoing, the Ghana police’s integrity is in tatters. One may be right to accuse the police of being in league with criminals to perpetrate and perpetuate crimes against the people of Ghana and the nation.

Could the police get away with such blue murders in Rwanda and under the watch of His Excellency Paul Kagame? Your guess is as right as mine.

Rockson Adofo

Sunday, 20 June 2021

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