The lead story in yesterday’s edition of the DAILY GUIDE cannot be winked at. A story about a gold dealer allegedly losing an amount of $209,172 to police officers, while it rightly deserved the prominence as the lead story, it  is equally one which should trigger an immediate reaction from the Police Management Board.
It is an allegation which should be handled with both swiftness and surgical precision. When its veracity is eventually established, an opportunity would have reared its head for the law enforcement agency to shed itself of image denting elements within its ranks.
The ranks of law enforcement or civil police should have no room for bad guys.
With the GP registration number of the vehicle on which the suspects were reported to be in and other details available, we expect the suspects to be apprehended without undue delay so investigations can commence.
Such moral infractions as exhibited by the law enforcement officers impact negatively on the image of the police, an institution which requires more than others public confidence.
A police institution which is bereft of public confidence cannot deliver on its mandate.
Some police officers have ended up in prison because of their involvement in criminal activities such as letting service weapons to armed robbers or even partaking in the criminality themselves.
It is worrying when the many good police officers in the Police Service have their reputation collectively tainted by the few bad nuts whose actions are so grave that they must be fished out immediately and made to face the existing Police Enquiry procedures and eventually the law.
For those who have served in the Service and now on retirement, such developments are enough to get them squirming in their chairs at home.
It is our hope that today the Police Administration would issue a press release announcing the identification and arrest of the rogue cops.
It took many years from the promulgation of the Police Ordinance in 1894 to date to build the Police Service. Being the foremost internal security institution in the country as established by the Constitution, all must be done to shield it from the rogue elements.
Various procedures are adopted to ensure that only persons of good moral standing are enlisted, but it is impossible to find out all the negative attributes of recruits, hence the slipping in of rogues.
Should the claims of the complainant be true, the suggestion is that the suspects had a tipoff about the former carrying that amount of money on him from their accomplices.
An important lesson to be learnt from the foregone is carrying such bulky amount of money on a Sunday, when there are safer electronic means of dealing with such transactions which the gold dealer could have availed himself of.
We shall pause here as we await the update of the Police Administration on this daring and unacceptable development.