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Opinions of Saturday, 6 November 2010

Columnist: Quaye, Stephen A.

Ghana Police Service Or Ghana Speaking Service?

From: Stephen A. Quaye, Toronto-Canada.

With the sole intent to rubbish, ridicule, or possibly insult people who find time to express their opinions on pressing issues, it has become clear that some readers just upon seeing the names of the writers jump to commentary boxes and post their insulting comments to pieces.
Instead of ignoring the name of the writer or the heading of the piece posted and read the whole content to get the true picture of what the material is about before passing their comments, they just use “F” and “S” words to attack writers which need to be addressed.
A case of study was the piece I posted on Peace F.M. web page titled “Debunking the story was not enough” and the commentary a faceless guy somewhere posted to it. As if he has a case with me started by saying he did not need to read my crap whether I was writing from Canada, Afghanistan or the mars but in the end he rather made no sense in what he wrote.
The whole piece was simply trying to find out who was telling the truth to the people about the alleged mass rape on the bus. Was it the supposed near victim Amina Mohammed who reported the story on Adom F.M. or the Ghana Police Service which came out to say it was a hoax?
We need to know whether the near victim concocted the story to create fear and panic and the punishment to be handed down to her to prevent others planning to do similar thing. The same way we need to know whether the police service lied to the president and the good people of Ghana just by debunking the story to safe their faces of not ensuring total security in the country so that if some heads will roll it kicks start.
Then came the questions I posted but since the driver of the bus, a passenger and his tourist friend, other passengers have all come to deny or confirm that the incident took place I will not repeat those questions again but rather wait for the outcome as it has called for more investigations to be conducted into the incident.
But one big question lingering in my mind that I want the police service to answer is whether the GPS is a speaking service or a service tasked to ensure total security of government officials, traditional authorities, ordinary men and women as well as properties.
This is because in recent times I have found the security service to be what I termed as a speaking service instead of being action oriented instead of conducting more investigations into issues, events and ensure that the best security needed is provided and not always coming out in the media to rejoin or debunk stories and talk at length in explaining things.
In Canada for instance, Toronto Police has been tipped as the most secret and confidential security service and yes whoever is living in the city can confirmed that. Whenever they have not finished investigations into issues or events they do not talk to the press and when it does it never comes back to debunk what it said earlier on.
All that they do is spending more time in conducting investigations into cases and ensure each and everyone is protected.
A typical example was the news reported in the 24 Hour newspaper on November 3,2010 that about 2.5 million dollars worth of marijuana plants were seized when the Toronto Police drug squad officers raided a grow operation hidden in Scarborough apartment building, the police said. The investigation is on ongoing and several suspects are outstanding therefore asking anyone with information about the grow to contact them.
It is a fact that majority of Ghanaians have lost confidence in the police service that is why they decide to go to the media to air their complaints only for the public directorate to come out and safe their crest falling bosses.
It is time Ghana Police Service change their modus operandi from talking at length on radio stations to explain issues and events to establishing sources which will give them information leading to investigations that will expose fraudulent acts and other activities which are criminal.
End.