Hmmm, ‘no where cool’ is an old age Ghanaian parlance used to offer consolation to individuals and communities in a comparative way. When I was a kid, the Policeman was painted to me as a fearful individual rather than a person to protect me. At home, even when a child cried, he was threatened with an arrest by the Police. Children of my generation saw the Police as enemies and not friends. Bad as it was, the fear of the Police also instilled a certain level of discipline in some of us.
The only time in my life that the Police has ever invited me and ended up prosecuting me was in 1998 when an article I co-authored with other journalists in the African Observer, now the Africa Watch, incurred the displeasure of the then Attorney General of the Republic, Dr. Obed Asamoah under the obnoxious and repealed Criminal Libel Law. Save the professional hazard, I have done well in not breaking the law and attracting the attention of the law enforcing agencies. I still want to ensure that at my age, I do not have any brush with the law.
The Police Officer in Ghana is both a friend and a foe depending on what happens to the Ghanaian. If one is a victim of wronging doing, the Police is the first point of call to help the process of justice. If on the other hand the person is the villain, the Police Officer is a hindrance in his way. The truth of the matter is that even the villain who is today vilifying the Police Officer for having committed a crime will need the Police Officer someday. There is this story about a thief who failed in his stealing expedition and was being chased by a mob. He ran to seek safety at a nearby Police Station.
The society expects so much from the Police in modern days and times because the growth of society comes with all manner of criminals as well as very good people. While good people are upgrading themselves to help society, bad people are upgrading themselves to outwit society. Crime has taken a different dimension in line with technology as a result of which criminals are always ahead of the security agencies. To be able to combat effectively crime in our societies, the Police Service needs to be efficiently equipped.
All of us accept this and governments have either made concerted efforts at solving this problem or acknowledged it. In many instances, when all of us talk about equipping the Police, we limit ourselves to career or professional equipment, communication gadgets, easy to handle guns, vehicles and anything the Police requires to combat crime. We add the almighty insatiable demand in salaries. We tend to forget that the personal needs of the Police Officer are also very important. Where he lives and the working environment are very crucial for an efficient service delivery.
Let us ask ourselves what type of accommodation do the Police Officers live in, since our part of the world, the Police are supposed to live in barracks. I remember in the 1970s, under General Kutu Acheampong, modern flats were constructed to accommodate Police Officers at least in the regional capitals and other district offices of the Service. They were not completed and they were abandoned after the overthrow of his government.
It was during President Kufuor’s era that these buildings which were over 30 years old, were completed. As a Takoradi boy, I can cite examples from the Twin-City. I lived at Effia-Kumah No.1 and began my primary school there. The Police Station and the barracks there were built with mud bricks and beautified with cement by the colonial masters just as the quarters for the civilian population who offered labour for the construction of the harbour and railways. Over 100 years later, the structures have changed for the worst. The buildings are hanging as a result of erosion.
What used to be a beautiful Police Park where schools at the time played inter-schools matches, is now a sorry sight of its former state. Take a walk to the Police Station and the barracks accommodating the men and women in uniform who are supposed to protect us and you will see an overcrowded structure being called an accommodation. Move to the Central Police Station in the centre of Takoradi, once again a popular place for industrial league matches in the 1960s through to the 1980s, where many of Sekondi-Takoradi’s talented footballers were groomed, and the buildings accommodating the women and men in uniforms, who are supposed to protect all of us, are nothing to write home about. Terrible is an understatement.
When I was the District Chief Executive for the Ahanta West District in the Western Region, the Police Barrack and the Bungalow of the Chief Inspector were all using pan latrines, including the Police Station Cells, not too long ago; 2001-2009. We had to convert all of them into water-closet systems and connect them to the pipe system to improve their lives. In fact there were not enough rooms to house the newly posted Police Officers to the District. I had to temporary offer a building we had bought to renovate for a Community Centre and fit for all purpose Social Centre, to accommodate the men and women in the black uniforms. Ten years after I left, they still occupy the facility.
A few Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies are doing a lot to improve the situation but building Police facilities are not part of the primary functions of the MMDAs and they do not have the funds to engage in those activities since they do not even have money to address the primary responsibility of tackling the sanitation situations engulfing them.
I recently visited the Police Headquarters in Accra, the CID Block to be specific, I was so shocked at the conditions under which our trained men and women work to ensure justice and protection for all. Occupying partitions of offices of about 12×12 feet dimensions, with a number of tables for each officer, with documents occupying more than half of the surface area of the table on which the officer is working. I immediately understood why dockets get missing and investigations get so protracted and Police prosecutions get a lot of adjournments.
I asked myself whether we have to rely only on our governments to properly create the needed environment for the Police Service to be effective? The Insurance Companies in this country are making a lot of money because the Police Officers enforce the laws on motor insurance. What has been the contributions of the Insurance Companies to help improve the logistic needs of the Police Service? The Commercial Banks and the Financial Institutions which use the services of the Police Service on a daily basis, can create a Fund and contribute monies that will go a long way to address the logistical needs of the Service.
As citizens, we are crying about insecurity, what can we do to help? Don’t talk about you paying your taxes. Can the working population be contributing GH¢5.00 a month into a Fund that will provide vehicles and other crime combating communication gadgets to help them ensure our safety? Then the Government will focus on the provision of infrastructure and accommodation to create a conducive working and residential environment for our collective ‘security and surety’?
Then I can humbly suggest that any new Police Post must not be less than one storey structure so that the ground floor can be used as offices while the upper floor can serve as accommodation for some of the officers. So that apart from the Officers on Duty, there still will be personnel at the Station, even when they are not on duty.
Politicians should also hands off the process of recruitment into the Service so that criminals covering themselves with political robes may not find themselves recruited into the Service. I have refrained from talking about the bad side of the Service for good reasons. This is a Crusade to lift up the Service and not to bring it down.
Three tots in the name of the Police
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