Security expert calls for equity in police house-cleaning

A security expert is asking for equity in efforts to clamp down and weed out police officers involved in narcotic deals and other wrongs.

The Inspector General of Police, Patrick Acheampong is on a campaign to rid the Service of corrupt officers. Over the last couple of months, several officers suspected to be involved in the narcotics trade have been interdicted.

The latest is the arrest of nine officers in the Western Region on alleged narcotics offences. They are standing trial and will also face a service inquiry for deserting their posts.

Whiles commending the IGP's efforts Dr. Emmanuel Anning says the concentration appears to be on junior officers.

In an interview with Joy News' Elvis Quarshie, Dr. Anning questions the police administration's handling of senior officers like ACP Kofi Boakye.

The Justice Wood's committee that investigated the cocaine scandal last year recommended Boakye's prosecution. But Dr. Anning says the administration's inaction defeats the purpose of cleaning up the Service.

“It bothers me that the Police Service, which is the primary, number one public security agency has been infiltrated to such an extent that for the past nine months to one year, one can hardly open a newspaper without hearing the police involvement in narcotic related crime. And this is not an issue that only deals with the lower level police officers. I mean this is a canker that spreads across the whole institution,” he said.

Dr. Anning said the canker has been a long-term degenerative process that has eaten into the very fabric and core of the Police Service and remains a very big problem.

While commendable the Police for giving up its rotten apples, he maintained that the publicly accessible information on the process of house cleaning does not support a blanket punishment of wrong, but one tilted against junior officers.