There’s increasing indiscipline in the Police Service because the element of strong monitoring and supervision is lacking, giving room for officials to act with impunity without recourse to the law, Member of Parliament for Ledzokuku constituency, Dr. Bernard Okoe Boye has observed.
Speaking on Citi TV’s weekend analysis show; ‘The Big Issue’, Dr. Okoe Boye who was speaking on the back of recent police attacks noted how Ghanaian police officers particularly move around freely without any form of identification; name tags nor numbers. This, according to him, reduces the quality of the profession and creates the impression that they can behave in whichever way they please since they cannot be easily recognized.
He cited instances where police officers have had course to misbehave and abuse their office simply because they were not in name tags or bore no form of identification.
“The police, first it has to do with training. People have raised issues with the quality that is absorbed. If the quality is compromised as a result of some factors, if the quality is problematic, what you have to do is to get a strong monitoring and supervisory system. The police out there, is there any tool to have an idea about their conduct? Myself I’ve been a victim, I was at a program with the commander of a group at an event with the President there, his behaviour was so crude and he had no name tag. Such people act with such impunity because they move around with no name tags and numbers and its business as usual”, he stated.
The right systems he urged, must be put in place to ensure that no officer, under any circumstance, moves out of a station without an identification tag or number. Sanctions he said, must also strictly apply in cases where that rule is violated by any official.
“These are the issues we must try to address. No police officer or soldier, no security officer should step out in public without his name tag and number on his shirt. Immediately that is identified, they must be sanctioned. There are fine officers but there are others who are so rude and they do that because they know the monitoring system is poor. Any job you do, if monitoring is poor, you do what you like. If there is nobody watching you, and who watches the watchman, once there is no such mechanism, people do what they like”.
Concerns have been raised by Ghanaians and the press about ‘attacks’ and killings of civilians by police officers in recent times.
Some seven persons who were suspected to be robbers in the Ashanti Region were shot Tuesday by police officers.
The seven were believed to be part of eight suspected robbers whose attack led to the death of a Police Officer with the SWAT Unit of the Ashanti Regional Police Command at Ayirebikrom near Manso Nkwanta.
Another police officer, Lance Corporal Frederick Amanor, was captured in a video Thursday at the Midland Savings and Loans Financial services, beating to a pulp, an elderly woman with a two-month-old baby.
President Akufo-Addo, speaking on the issue said indiscipline must not be condoned and called for the punishment of the identified officer.
Meanwhile, the Ghana Bar Association, Ghana Police Service and Occupy Ghana have all released statements to condemn the conduct of the police officer and the staff of the savings and loans company who failed to intervene.
Occupy Ghana has further called for the prosecution of staff of the bank for aiding and abetting the crime while some legal brains have strongly urged the woman to sue both the police and the financial institution.
Frederick Amanor has been arrested on the orders of the Inspector General of Police and investigations into his conduct is underway.
