Ordeal Most Obscene

Ghana Police Service

The ordeal which Suspect Kwabena Owusu passed through at the hands of trained policemen in the Brong Ahafo Region leaves much to be desired. It made us wonder whether the word 'professionalism' is understood by some policemen.

Indeed, it is a tip of the iceberg of what happens in some parts of the country where these uniformed cops are law unto themselves.

They can frame up persons and push these through the courts and woe betides victims who luck eludes. Such unlucky persons can be jailed for reasons which cannot pass muster.

Perhaps, that is why the occasional visits to the prisons by judges under the 'Justice For All' programme to review certain cases enables people who were wrongly jailed to regain their freedoms.

Kwabena Owusu has lost all human dignity because the policemen in that Brong Ahafo district police station decided upon themselves to show him where power lies.

To tie a male adult who has a wife and children to a pole and refuse to allow him to attend to nature's call is not crazy but a crude conduct unworthy of a decent policeman.

It is amazing to think that such a thing happened in a 2012 Ghana when the said cops work directly under a station officer who reports to the district commander.

We are scandalized as a nation by the uncivil conduct of the cops. Even before any probe is instituted into the case, preliminary reports coming in show that the story of the suspect is consistent with what some policemen do outside the nation's capital and even in the regional capitals, except that in such cases suspects are not humiliated in this fashion.

This, unlike the other instances of misdemeanor on the part of some bad policemen, stands out and could find a place in the annals of bad policing in the country.

We won't be surprised if the said cops are still walking around as free men, yet to be questioned by the appropriate superior officers. But for the exposure by the media of such crude conducts, society could have been reduced to an animal kingdom where barbarism reigns.

We recall the Bawku incident where an Officer Commanding a detachment of the Airborne Force on internal security duties ordered that two teachers be stripped naked in the presence of their pupils. The public outcry resonated across the country at the time.

Let action be taken against the defaulting cops even before the Chief Constable in Accra orders so.

The classroom subjects at the police training schools, if they do not include a study of human rights, should be reviewed with a view to ensuring that this is done without delay.

We actually do not think that such a deficiency exists in the training programmes of such institutions in the country. Perhaps, some cops decide to ignore what they were taught at the training schools erroneously, thinking they have the power to do whatever they wish on the poor residents they are paid to protect.

If they do not know, the said policemen have made it impossible for the suspect they dehumanized to reconcile with the woman whose relations got them to do what they did.

For the information of policemen who do not know it, even prisoners of war have rights under war conditions and these, when breached, are subject to sanctions under the Nuremburg Convention.

We are standing by for the appropriate action to be taken against these animals in uniform.