Elsewhere in this edition, there is a bad story about the police: an Inspector and his subordinates beat up a colleague cop in Winneba in the full glare of onlookers. Not even his self-identification that he is a colleague cop saved him from the assault of his colleagues, who eventually dragged him, as it were, to the Winneba District Police Station.
Sadly the attackers – officers from the Rapid Deployment Force – beat up the Inspector under the watch of their superior officer, an Assistant Superintendent of Police. Notwithstanding beating him up, their side of the coin was wrong.
The act of pulling the victim from a taxi and assaulting him is a pointer to how much indiscipline has become a feature of the law enforcement agency in the country.
It is regrettable that the law enforcement institution should be showing such moral fault lines. It is strange that police officers would do what they did to a colleague. Were the man to be a civilian perhaps they would kill him and claimed that he attacked them with an imaginary weapon.
We expect that those involved in this shameful act would be brought to book in consonance with Service Orders.
What moral authority would such cops have to attempt restoring public order when this is being breached in town? Of course, they have lost this important condition of policing – self control.
As for their commander, the Assistant Superintendent of Police, we wonder whether he must continue being a commissioned officer. He should either be sacked or demoted to the rank of a Corporal. Assuming that the assaulted cops did what the superior officer claimed he did – obstructing the police from doing their work – was watching his men assault a human being the way it happened the right thing to do?
A commander is expected to exude discipline by proper control of his men and certainly not encouraging them to be disorderly and to conduct themselves in a manner not commensurate with the standards of policing.
We expect the RDF men who were deployed for duties at the Aboakyir Festival in Winneba and who are at the centre of the shameful act to be put on orders immediately.
They are unfit to don the uniform of police officers. They do not understand what policing is about and cannot be counted upon to be good ambassadors of the Ghana Police Service.
The efforts at changing the image of the police can only start when such bad nuts are identified through their bad conduct and eliminated from the Service.
Ghana needs a new crop of police officers and superior officers alike and not the like of the RDF officers who disgraced themselves and the Ghana Police Service near a Winneba taxi rank.
In an age of social media driven pictures, we would not be surprised if pictures of the brawl were taken and distributed across the world. Shame unto the officers!
We expect the PR outfit to come out with a statement on this incident and what actions are being preferred against the defaulters. We have had too much of such indiscipline from the police.