ACP Reverend Laurencia W. Akorli, Aridjah Frank and facilitators in a group photograph with participants
A four-day intensive community policing training course organised for 30 police officers drawn from the ten police regions in the country has ended in Accra.
The course participants included officers from the inspectorate rank who by their job schedule serve as liaison officers between the junior ranks and the senior officers, and was organised by the Ghana Police Service Community Police Directorate and the Hanns Seidel Foundation.
The Director in charge of the Community Policing Unit, ACP Reverend Laurencia W. Akorli in an address said the main goal of the course is to highlight the importance of community policing to personnel and how all police officers operating in the various communities can implement the concept and make our communities safer.
She said policing has now been shifted from the reactive module to proactive, adding that one of the tools to curb crime before it is committed is through community policing.
“Community policing requires a transition from traditional policing methods to proactive and problem-oriented policing which is constructed upon police-citizen partnership, and for the successful implementation of this, the change process needs to be fully realised throughout the service and with the involvement of all personnel,” she stressed.
Continuing, she said, “Some police personnel believe that the concept of community policing is for a particular personnel serving in the directorate.”
While debunking this notion, she added that community policing must start from the individual stations to the communities they serve.
She hinted that through the course, a total of 120 personnel have been trained in community policing; a number which she said would be increased subsequently.
ACP Akorle urged personnel to continue to work hard, serve as ambassadors to help rebuild the lost image of community policing.
In an address, Aridjah Frank, a representative of Hanns Seidel Foundation charged personnel to go to their various communities to make impact, adding that they should always act professionally in the discharge of their duties for effective policing.
Pix saved in new daily folder as 30
Caption: ACP Reverend Laurencia W. Akorli, Aridjah Frank and facilitators in a group photograph with participants
By Linda Tenyah-Ayettey