We cannot ignore the murder of two armed police officers last Wednesday at Budumburam, near Kasoa. The rising statistics of murdered cops is cause for worry.
Our grief is not restricted to the loss of the lives of police officers but rather human beings who opted to serve society by enlisting in the Ghana Police Service. It is shameful that criminals ended their lives in such despicable fashion.
In this latest callous murder, the two persons, like others in other engagements, bade adieu to their families and set off to work, unknowing that death was beckoning them at the hands of good-for-nothing hoodlums.
In the past few weeks, police officers have lost their lives at the hands of criminal elements in society.
These cold blooded murders have taken place at a time of relative better management of the security in the country. Indeed, we have taken notice of how some would like to draw the subject into the nasty realms of partisan politics as it is played out in our part of the world.
We reject this attempt and ask that rather than relish what is not only unproductive but inappropriate as some politicians on the other side of the aisle seek to do, we join hands in assisting the security agents to fight crime. That is the only way to enhance the security of our country.
A secure Ghana is one which would help us to achieve our goal of national development.
While we acknowledge the unalloyed commitment of the National Security Council and its related agencies in ensuring the safety of lives, property and the territorial integrity of the nation, we would ask that more be done to protect the state agents who enforce the law.
In the past few years since the assumption of office by the Akufo-Addo government, a lot has happened in providing vehicles and logistics for the law enforcement agents and still counting. We have not lost sight of the reality of the needs of the police competing with other equally important departments of state. These notwithstanding, we ask that more be done to protect their lives because it is this which would motivate them to take on the daredevil criminals.
Criminals cannot be eliminated completely from society but holding them at bay and reducing their efficiencies at depriving people of their property, maiming and even killing them is what policing is about. To achieve this requires the commitment of a lot of resources to this department of state especially in a world in which advanced technology has made criminals sophisticated and more daring.
Personnel of the law enforcement agency must be given ample assurance that the people of Ghana are behind them in their sincere efforts to enforce the law.
Even as we empathise with the Police Administration, senior officers, the Inspectorate Class and the other ranks and indeed the families of the deceased, we would serve notice that the bad elements in the roll of the police should be identified and given the boot. Such elements apart from tarnishing the image of the Ghana Police Service endanger the lives of the wonderful cops who work day and night to fulfill their mandate of protecting lives and property.
Crime can only be made unattractive to criminals when members of the public support the law enforcement agents in stopping the hoodlums before they are able to strike. Crime, when members of the public join hands, wholeheartedly with the police can be reduced to the barest minimum which should be our target. After all, the criminals live among us and with minimal nosiness we can spot them and expose them.