Atebubu Police Commander denies taking bribe

To drop case of two fire officers

The Commander of the Atebubu District Police Unit, DSP Dzekonu has denied that he and his men have been bribed by the three officers of the Ghana Fire service to drop a case of attempted murder and assault pending before the Atebubu District Magistrate Court.
Speaking in an interview with the New Crusading Guide, the commander said there are rumors in town that he and his men have collected a sum of GHC7, 400 from the three suspects to drop the case of assault and attempted murder against the two fire officers.
“I can confidently tell you that neither I nor any of my officers here has taken a penny from the suspects” the case in court pending proceedings on 8th April 2014. The suspects are being made to face the full rigours of the law and I will make sure this case is monitored to the end” he stated.
It will be recalled that a magistrate Court in Atebubu in the Brong Ahafo Region on Wednesday 12th February remanded two Officers of the Ghana National Fire Service into prison custody for assaulting a senior colleague and a police officer.
The accused persons, John Kwasi Takyi and Kyereme Koranteng were remanded for a week to reappear on the 19th of February for hearing and were subsequently granted bail.
Narrating the facts of the case, chief inspector Nyarko stated that on the 9th of February , a senior fire officer , Patrick Addo lodged a complaint to the Police that his junior officer one John Kwasi Takyi had assaulted him and attempted to shoot him with a pistol over a misunderstanding .
Based on that, the police mounted surveillance for the accused person and two other accomplices who aided him in that regard. Upon seeing the accused persons, one Police officer got out of the police vehicle to arrest them but was heavily slapped by one of them. The accused person together with his accomplice Steven Boakye and Kyereme Koranteng, all fire officers then made attempts to snatch a gun held by one of the Police officers but they were overpowered and two of them were arrested and placed in Police Custody. The other one escaped and a search is being mounted for his arrest.
According to the Police, confusion began on 9th February when John Kwasi Takyi the accused warned Patrick Addo, the victim to desist from marking him absent on the daily register when he fails t report to work. This was because he had informed the district fire officer about his intermittent absenteeism and based on that there was no need to mark him absent on the register.
However the claim was rejected by the district fire officer who ordered the victim to mark him absent if he fails to report to work which he obliged. However, this did not go down well with John Kwasi Takyi who attacked Fire officer Addo and pulled a pistol to split his head but the pistol failed to fire on two occasions. In an attempt by another colleague, Paul Agyeman to grab the pistol from John Takyi failed leading to another shot but the pistol failed to fire once again. John then gave a warning shot to disperse the crowd and this helped him to escape but was subsequently arrested.