It would be unfair and inappropriate not to congratulate the Police administration for its action on personnel exhibiting symptoms of derangement and alcoholism.
Although such action should have been taken long before now, it is better late than never.
We would console ourselves and pray that henceforth deranged personnel and alcoholics in uniform would be identified and offered the necessary treatment. Above all, such personnel should be denied access to firearms.
The two categories of personnel are dangerous to themselves, colleagues and families as amply evidenced recently in Tema when the late Amuzu turned a firearm against his mother-in-law, children and himself.
The widow who would definitely have been killed had she been around on that fateful day, is still grieving over her loss: her predicament too difficult to comprehend.
The categories of personnel under review are persons who bear firearms in the course of their duties and so the need to be mindful about the state of their minds should not be ignored.
Not showing interest in their mental conditions by their commanders can be fatal.
There is no gainsaying the fact that commanders of divisions, districts or even station officers must be watchful about personnel under them so that should there be any unusualness in their conduct, the necessary action can be applied so that awkward consequences are not recorded.
We urge the police administration to ensure that the directive is adhered to the letter.
Such orders are sometimes as good as the paper conveying them. Extra efforts must be made to find out whether those entrusted with the task of managing their men and women perform their duties to expectation.
With a worrying number of Ghanaians requiring psychiatric attention and the law enforcement agency being a segment of the population, it is important that those who bear firearms are of sound mind.
Mental illness, just like other health challenges, is still misunderstood by most Ghanaians.
That is why even when it is glaring that some persons have been afflicted with mental illnesses, family members do not bother to turn to the experts unless the patients get violent and pose a threat to others. The same cannot be said about life-threatening ailments.
Domestic violence, we believe, must be tackled differently from the way it is currently being handled by both families and the Domestic Violence and Victims Support Unit of the Ghana Police Service. When the safety of a wife cannot be guaranteed in a particular marriage, dissolving the marital union should not be too difficult to recommend.
It is the best option to take and not the pretence normally adopted by family heads when the woman is turned into a nightly punching bag.
In cases where the husband is on record to have beaten his wife for more than twice and does not show remorse, dissolution of the union is a better option.
Women who have died at the hands of their battering husbands could have been spared the painful death from assault and battery had family members and other relevant state players cared a bit more than they did.