The Speaker of Parliament, Professor Mike Ocquaye, has directed Parliament’s Defence and Interior Committee to investigate the recent killing of on-duty police officers and to recommend means of ensuring the safety of the officers.
Four police officers have been shot at, and some killed, in the line of duty within June and July 2017.
The Inspector General of Police blamed the incidents on serious logistical constraints; even though the Interior Minister insists the Police Service will be sufficiently resourced.
But, making a case for Parliament’s urgent intervention, the Member of Parliament for Ledzokuku, Dr. Bernard Okoe Boye called for an immediate audit of the police patrol department.
“It is a criminal who should be pleading with a security officer to spare his or her life, and not the reverse. To have a police officer begging a criminal gives a weighty indication that all is not well with respect to the safety of police personnel,” Dr. Okoe Boye lamented in reference to the final moments of an officer killed at Lapaz.
The MP said his call was to ensure the Defence and Interior Committee performs “an audit of the real state of the national patrol department to identify the deficit that allows such police brutalities to occur so overtly and brazenly.”
The Police administration, earlier in July, posthumously promoted two of its officers who were killed in the line of their duty.
The officers, Lance Corporal Robert Kumi Larbi Ackah and Constable Michael Kporyi lost their lives in two separate incidents at Dawadawa on the Buipe-Kintampo road and Michel Camp in Accra respectively.
Corporal Robert Kumi Ackah was killed on the Buipe – Kintampo highway, when he was escorting an OA passenger bus to the Northern Region. He was said to have been mistaken to be an armed robber by his colleagues in a Patrol Team.
