Not all police personnel are criminals

Six police officers were convicted on Tuesday, this week, by an Accra Circuit Court for robbing a businessman of various sums of money, and were sentenced to 20 years imprisonment each.

Apart from the immediate families of the convicts, most Ghanaians did not sympathise with them, because, as peace officers they should have known better, instead of allowing the desire for money to override their professional conduct. This incident is not an isolated case, as there are records of police personnel who have engaged in criminal activities in the recent past.

According to yesterday's issue of the Daily Graphic, a police Lance Corporal, Delaili Osae, based at Tema Community One, had been arrested for allegedly partnering an armed robbery gang to engage in a number of robbery escapades. The suspect is currently on interdiction awaiting prosecution.

According to police records, 38 police personnel have been dismissed from the service since the beginning of the year, while 34 have been interdicted for various acts of offences.

The Inspector General of Police, Mr. Paul Tawiah Quaye, has promised to weed out all miscreants in the service.

The Chronicle wishes to strongly associate itself with the statement made by the police boss, since the involvement of police personnel in criminal activities was a worrying phenomenon that must be checked.

The Chronicle however thinks it would be wrong for anybody to use the bad conduct of a few police officers to generalise that the entire personnel of the service are a bunch of criminals.

People with dubious characters are found in every human institution, but that does not make the rest of the people working in the same institution criminals.

The Chronicle is, therefore, appealing to the general public to be mindful of such disparaging comments against the police, since we must endeavour to keep the sanctity of the police service.

It is a fact that the image of the police service has been dented over the past years. Ghanaians would remember the case of the seized cocaine that was under police lock and key, but managed to disappear. To date, nobody knows the whereabouts of the narcotic drug, and nobody has been arrested and prosecuted.

Clearly, some of these developments do not portray a good image for the police service. But, it will be wrong to use such aberrations to describe the whole police service as being guilty.

The Chronicle believes that the positives of the police service far outweigh their bad side.

Many police officers have either been murdered or maimed in the course of duty, when they protect the citizens of this country.

It seems Ghanaians have overlooked the good side of the police, and are rather concentrating on the isolated bad conduct of a few police personnel.

Surely, this is not the best way to encourage our peace-enforcing officers.