Donkorkrom robbery where a GCB bullion van was attacked by armed robbers who were police officers and their mechanic accomplice will also go down in memory as one of the usual controversies that have been confronting the police service and be forgotten soon but it will certainly leave issues of broken trust among the police officers particularly junior ranks.
You would not know who to trust again in this our police service since criminals are creeping into our midst. You now don’t know the enemy since the enemy can be the same person you were trained together at the training school, passed out the same day, posted to the same station, staying in the same barracks with you currently or probably your next door neighbour, or the very one you are performing duty with holding AK47 assault rifle loaded with rounds of ammunition. He could turn on you and kill you since one cannot read the motive of human beings unless exhibited expressly or implied. It really calls for self-introspections and retrospection the police service now.
Police involvement in robberies is now a trend in crime combat and must be approached with a certificate of urgency. Almost every now and then, robberies that have been orchestrated whereby a police officer died are engineered by our own colleagues in the black uniform. It is very disappointing and appalling that that those who are supposed to protect the nation are rather persecuting the nation and in the process killing fellow police officers.
It’s a trend that needs to be broken to eschew these “wolves in sheep clothes” in the police to save the confidence and trust Ghanaians have in the police service. Our sacred oath has been broken by some unscrupulous police officers and it will certainly have ripple effects on us as police officers. We have been put into disrepute.
In my candid opinion, despite constraints faced by police officers in crime combat, the police administration made some strides in crime combat particularly in areas of robberies last year and this year. The tenure of COP/Mr Tetteh Yohunu as the Accra Police Regional commander almost brought robbery to its barest minimum in Accra and its environs.
The current Ashanti Regional commander COP/Mr Kofi Boakye has also made positive strides in combating robberies. Other commanders who were not capture by the cameras of the media are also doing their best. We were making positive impact until the trend where police officers are themselves armed robbers started to emerge. All forms of robberies are dangerous but robberies engineered by police officers cum armed robbers is not only dangerous but a threat to police officers in particular and the society at large. Our threats and risks factors have increased considering this trend.
Rampant police officers involvement in robberies should send positive signals to us that the police service needs serious self introspection and retrospection. How did these police- cum-robbers find their way into the noble police service? It’s a multi dollar question that will always remain rhetorical but we must try and find serious answers to it for the sake of our safety and trust that we have in our colleague officers as far as crime combat is concerned.
Gone were the days that BNI does serious background checks for “wannabe” police officers before they are admitted to the various training schools to be trained to become police officers. In those days, cases of these nature were very rare but now, it is increasingly becoming the order of the day in the police service. Since the BNI was detached from the police service, who performs the role of checking the backgrounds of numerous people who want to join the police service for their personal gains instead of service and dedication to mother Ghana? I guess the answer is system failures. The systems have been deactivated hence the results we are seeing.
There is this crop of police officers I call money driven generation. They are very dangerous and can sacrifice anybody for monetary gains whether you are colleague or not. We are with them in barracks, stations and offices. We see them and realize that they have questionable characters that fall below the standards of police service but we wait till they commit heinous crimes before we realise that they were actually criminally minded people who mysteriously found themselves in the police. Their crave for money leaves a lot to be desired. We have to do internal soul searching as members of the police service take collective responsibility to help flush out these miscreants for our own safety as police officers.
We have reach the stage where every police officer must be made to secretly monitor his fellow officers whether he or she is doing the right thing or not. We should set internal systems of monitoring and surveillance in motion to curb some of these disgraceful occurrences which make the police service a toast for public condemnation. There should be laid down mechanisms for police officers to reports colleagues with suspected criminal characters to the police administration for possible tracking and surveillance.
You should be made to write confidential reports and forward them secretly to intelligence offices in the police for surveillance to be laid on those who the police administration has received several ill reports about them from their own colleagues as well as their commanders.
They should be tracked for the safety of the police officer, his or her family in particular and that of the citizenry in general. It should be part of our strategies to fight crime from within the service. Character assessment of police officers should not be left in the hand of commanders alone but rather we should create “brothers keeper” situation where every police officer will have the feeling that he is being monitored by his own colleagues since you don’t know the kind of confidential report your own colleagues are writing about you and in the same vein, they also don’t know what you are writing about them.
It is too early for one to conclude that there is syndicated sponsorship of criminals into the police as done in some jurisdictions particularly in areas of drug trafficking but emerging trends are really sending us signals that we need to do serious self retrospective assessment and start the hunting from within. We often sea the civilian population as a pool of potential criminals and presume that police officers do not have tendencies to commit crimes and that is very wrong.
Currently there seems to me that there is a sharp contrast between police officers who were enlisted before the year 2000 and those who were enlisted after 2000. The before 2000 generatIon seem to have self comportment, tact and disciplined than the after 2000 generatIon who seems to be driven by monetary gains and greed. I have always been saying that serious background check should be conducted on those of us who joined the police service after the year 2000 since some of us behave strangely. Their association with questionable characters in the society leaves a lot to be desired. There is nothing about them which show that they are police officers but on the other hand, you can see from afar how comfortable they are when they are in the midst of questionable characters in communities. Their choice of friends sparks investigations.
Donkorkrom robbery which was orchestrated by the two police officers will definitely affect the trust police officers have for themselves since everybody is now a potential suspect. Until we are able to break this trend by activating all our check systems to eschew these miscreants, it will definitely affect our tactics in crime combat. If it is not nibbed from the bud, in the near future there will not be any difference between a police officer and a criminal. We will all be the same.
As to why the armed robbers-cum- police officers escaped, next time when I find my pen and paper, I will tell you my experiences of handling cases that involves our colleague police officers. It is full of conflicts of interest. For now, we really need to do self- introspections and retrospections both as individuals and a whole as police service.