Strategic management instituted to reform the Police Service -IGP

Ho, May 7, GNA - The Inspector General of Police, Mr Paul Quaye, has said the strategic management approach the Ghana Police Service has adopted would rid the Service of ineptitude and shadiness. He listed training and retraining, proactive intelligence gathering machinery, clampdown on the gross abuse and inhuman treatment of suspects, effective human resource management, administrative accountability and institutional re-branding as high points in the paradigm shift. Mr Quaye was addressing officers and men of the Service as part of day's trip to the Volta Region.

He said many officers had not "received any revision or additional training apart from the initial training on recruitment" and that appropriate manpower development programmes should handle the training needs of personnel to meet the vision of the Ghana Police Service as a world class policing service.

Mr Quaye said all detectives needed to be computer literate to meet the exigencies of the time.

He said a new appraisal system for detectives would ensure only those who followed requirements of criminal investigation and procedures were retained in the Criminal Investigations Department (CID). The IGP complained about the flagrant disregard by detectives of criminal investigation procedures and practices as well as detectives code of ethics leading to "a sympathetic situation of large numbers of inmates of police cells whose cases have not been heard at the various courts of justice". "Detectives arrest innocent suspects and callously abandon them in police cells without even a statement taken from them or being told of the offence they had committed," Mr Quaye said. He mentioned juvenile and adults being kept in same cells, crime officers colluding with prosecutors to persuade some judges to remand suspects in prison custody over trivial issues as some of the bad things going on.

The IGP said "the most serious aspects of this inhuman treatment and gross abuse to human right and dignity of these unfortunate victims is that some of the detectives either negligently misplace the case dockets or at times deliberately hide them, thus condemning these suspects to perpetual incarceration as remand prisoners". He said this must stop and that "henceforth any detective who we find to have abandoned any suspect in cells shall be tried by way of Service Enquiry and maximum sanctions exacted".

Mr Quaye said computer software to guide postings and transfers was being developed to help in the management of placements that would serve the interest of the Service and not satisfy the whims of personnel. He said the corporate image of the Service remained bad notwithstanding the appreciable number of personnel with high academic qualifications in various fields who are devoted to their jobs. Mr Quaye attributed this to the "ill conceived activities of some of our personnel," influenced by greed and avarice, ultimately negating all the success chalked by the service.

The IGP slammed corrupt administrative practices in the Service such as pilfering, misuse of vehicles, fraudulent deals in the requisition for fuel, purchase of stationery, arrangement of hotel accommodation among others. He said something drastic needed to be done and that all officers at all levels would be held accountable for lapses.

Mr David Ampah-Bennin, the Volta Regional Police Commander, listed inadequate office and staff accommodation, lack of vehicles and inadequate number of personnel as some of the command's problems. The IGP described a parade held in his honour "as an apology and total confusion" for which the Regional Commander would be held responsible. The 60 men and one officer on parade were under the command of Mr Raymond Ali Wejong Adofiem, Commandant of the Volta Regional Police Training School in Ho. The IGP said the parade was as if the men and women had not gone for rehearsals.