The Few Crooks In The Ghana Police Service: Why The IGP Must Root Them Out Swiftly

I will begin by freely acknowledging that I might have been deliberately misled about the true facts concerning the matter below that I am about to express my own views on. However, so commonplace is misconduct in police caution-statement taking from illiterate-folk, by investigators nationwide, that as a human rights advocate, I must nonetheless risk writing publicly, about what I was told was a clearcut-case of injustice, involving an injured construction foreman.

One was quite shocked by the story narrated to one yesterday - about how a police investigator attached to the Gomoa Buduburam Camp Liberia police station, had allegedly succeeded in making a case against a building construction foreman, who while midstream executing a contract to build a fencewall, for a client, had allegedly collapsed in full view of independent witnesses.

(Incidentally, although one is yet to verify all the details of the story for want of time, so alarming is the story that for common-good reasons, one simply has to make it public, and thus ensure that it is investigated by the new transformational leadership, of the Ghana Police Service, for the truth to be established. But I digress.)

After allegedly collapsing, the said construction foreman was apparently then rushed to the Gomoa Buduburam Camp Liberia St. Gregory Catholic Hospital - where he is said to have received treatment for a period: a verifiable-fact apparently known to the client he was building the fencewall for, who apparently never had the decency (and humanity) to even visit the poor man whiles on admission at the St Gregory Catholic Hospital. Such is life in the Ghana of today - where the impression one gets is that the rich and powerful are a law onto themselves. Hmmm, eyeasem, ooooo...

The question is: Did that poor foreman, who it is said, neither speaks, comprehends, nor writes English, have a lawyer, or independent witness (who understands and writes English perfectly), present when the police investigator was writing his caution-statement, which one presumes formed the basis for his being charged with stealing (i.e. the agreed contract sum advanced to him to enable him mobilise and begin the building of the fencewall, which he is said to have also been apparently forced to repay that cruel Shylock), from that sodden client?

The question for those of us who are now totally fed up to the back teeth, with the few dishonest police officers still busy ruining the good name of the Ghana Police Service is: How possibly can the foreman have been charged with theft, if that police investigator had been professional and honest in handling the matter: such that it now appears that the man has more or been found guilty of the charge of stealing and now awaits sentencing, if one understands the issues narrated to one correctly, that is?

The Director General of the CID, must call for the docket (at what is the eleventh-hour before an innocent man is probably bundled off to serve a longish custodial sentence), and ask that the court adjourns the matter, and defers judgment - while the matter is reassigned to honest crack-investigators from CID HQ: to reinvestigate and report back to the CID Director General to avert a possible miscarriage of Justice outcome. Yooooooo...

The Gomoa Buduburam Camp Liberia Police Commander must also refer the investigator in question to the Police Intelligence and Professional Standards Bureau (PIPS), as soon as practicable - so that they deal with him for professional misconduct if it turns out that that is what actually happened: to serve as a warning to other Police investigators inclined to also take bribes to send impecunious and victimised innocent-people, whose only crime is that somehow they irritated the rich and powerful, in Ghanaian society, to prison.

Law-abiding and discerning-Ghanaians are now totally fed up, with the continued impunity and chicanery, still being exhibited by a relatively small number of ruthless and greed-filled crooks, in its rank and file, whose unprofessionalism is ruining the image and reputation of the Ghana Police Service. Enough is enough. The new IGP must root all of them out of the Ghana Police Service swiftly. Full stop. Case closed. Yooooooo...