How The Media Reports Police Brutalities - Cases Of Human Beings Bitting Harmless Dogs And Brave Snakes Trying To Save Fishes From Drowning

IF there is an aspect of police regulations that the police administration has strictly enforced over the years, it is the use of fire arms with or without justifications. You as a police must always justify why you resort to the use of fire arms in the course of discharging your duties of maintaining law and order.

Many police officers who have not been able to justify why they resorted to the use of fire arms thereby causing unlawful harm to people whilst performing their legitimate duties have been dismissed and many more have been held on murder charges and jailed after the victims died as a result of their actions.

The police administration does not treat with soft gloves its personnel who resort to the use of fire arms without recourse to laid down administrative codes and guiding principles on the use of fire arms. You will be arrested by the same police service and be prosecuted as if you have never wore the police uniform before.

I have seen many police officers being tried in that manner.

If nothing at all, I know of young police officer who was initially remanded into prison custody during the Hohoe skirmishes. Before I left the Volta Region, he was being tried on murder charges. I can mention more.

Many police officers have also died because they failed to pull the trigger at the right and exact time they were supposed to pull it. Today, their wives and children and other dependants are living at the mercy of God. Life has become like sour grapes in the mouths of such police wives who have lost their husbands in line of duties. For such children whose fathers were police officers and died in line of duties, life is hopeless as many of them drop out from school. The difficulty some of these families go through cannot be recounted here.

Funny enough, no media house in Ghana has reported civilian brutalities against the police because it is a case of dog bitting humans whereas that of the police is treated as human beings bitting harmless dogs with a lot media sensations. A lot of police officers have been attacked by civilians and in some cases police stations were vandalized. A lot of police officers have died this year and many more have been rendered incapacitated but the media is very silent on it because the police are not humans enough.

Interestingly enough, I have heard many people saying that the police do not have ammunition in their riffles. They have this popular believe that the police wield the gun just to put fear into people so the foolhardy ones among them sometime try to snatch weapons from the police anytime they have a confrontation with the police to exhibit their bravery to the admiration of their town folks.

I can list a number of such instances that I have personally encountered within my 10 years in the police.

I can personally remember somewhere in some of the neighbouring villages of Juapong where chieftaincy crisis erupted and when the police got there, there was this young man who is said to have immersed himself in juju tried to snatch the weapon from a police officer because it is believed that no ammunition can penetrate him. It took the interventions of the police commander else that young man would have been resting with his ancestors by now so that in his next world, if indeed there is any, he would not try to snatch a weapon from a police officer.

How then do we let people know that there are live ammunition in the guns of the police so that they do not cross their limits as far law enforcements are concerned? How do we tell them not to try to snatch weapons from armed police officers ?

That is what the media ought to do if indeed they are committed to reducing police brutalities order than to report police brutalities as a case of a brave snakes trying to save fishes from drowning and human beings bitting harmless dogs.

Ahanta Apemenyimheneba Kwofie III

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