Police patrols prefer ‘weed’ joints to chasing criminals – Ex-convict alleges

An ex-convict, Zigi has disclosed that Ghana Police Service patrol teams prefer the ghettos in their operations where they can extort money from ‘weed’ dealers.

Speaking to Bonohene Baffour Awuah on Ghana Kasa on Kasapa 102.5 FM, he said some of these patrol teams don’t go to their detailed areas, but rather lay ambush at ‘weed base’ with the aim of taking coins.

“Up till now, you can see the patrol teams parked at ‘weed’ joints taking between GHC200 and GHC500, when they nab these ghetto boys. We have guys who feed us with their locations. Before moving from here to Dansoman we have someone giving us updates on the way. So we don’t go in the direction of the police.”

He intimated that in order to swerve the police, criminals normally drive on the bad roads within the city that the police cannot drive on.

Meanwhile, the Inspector-General of Police (IGP) James Oppong-Boanuh has hit back at security analysts raising concerns over the seeming rising spate of crime in the country saying the Police is doing their best.

“We are doing what we can to protect the people of Ghana. There is no society in the world where there is no crime. Even in the USA, UK and Sweden, where they, more or less have everything, they still have crime. The only place that doesn’t have crime is heaven and we are not in heaven,” James Oppong-Boanuh told journalists after visiting the family of the officer who was slain in the Jamestown bullion van attack on Monday.

He continued: “So if any so-called security analyst is saying that we are not on top of our game and that’s why these things are happening, he does not know what he is talking about”.

It comes in the wake of the killing of a policeman and a trader in a bullion van attack at Jamestown in Accra.