Currently, as our lead story suggests, Ghana has assumed for herself some collective guilt over the purported 2,300 kilos of substance suspected to be cocaine that we hear went missing on the high seas. We have used reports that our law enforcement agents may have conspired with drug barons to take away 77 parcels, leaving one, to be the gospel truth. As if intelligence reports are sacrosanct.
We have used same to attack the institutional integrity of our police service. If the drugs, information about which was given to our law enforcement agents, had actually gone missing before the vessel could be raided, then our law officers know about it, seems to be the conventional wisdom. But, what if this is not true? Have we sat back and considered that, too?
Some are jumping the gun, calling for the IGP to go because some discredited witness, a former prostitute and former house help who took a new lucrative dream job of offering sexual favours to an alleged Venezuelan drug baron, is singing angrily because she has lost access to all that cash.
The Statesman believes we should take a deep national breath and do what others do. When such scandals of monumental proportions hit their police forces, they take their time and flush out the bad nuts and instill new tighter institutional policies without destroying the credibility of that all-important public institution tasked with maintaining law and order. We should not be so negative about the police service as if their task is limited to controlling the drug traffic alone.
The same way we should not be negative about lawyers representing alleged drug barons. It is naïve to think that our law enforcement agents are of an extraordinarily bad stock. The country certainly has difficulties with law enforcement, but let us not destroy what we have. Let us instead reform and improve it.
Just last Friday, a former county police deputy pleaded guilty in a US District Court to stealing about $25,000 in federal drug forfeiture money. There are bad cops everywhere but, to use the most hackneyed phrase, let us be careful about throwing the baby away with the dirty water.
Organised crime is big business and hard drugs are big business. Global profits from people smuggling are estimated to be $10 billion annually. In the UK alone, so called ‘dirty money’ or assets derived from crime represents around 2 percent of the country’s GDP, or $27 billion – up to half of which is derived from illegal drug transactions. Here in Ghana, in the true sense of globalisation, we are just getting into the act. But, this is one aspect of globalisation we are certainly better off without.
The issue really is how to tackle Ghana’s tag as an international warehouse for hard drugs. In fact, whether by coincidence or not, since discovering here as a major and relatively easy transitory distribution destination, the prices of cocaine have fallen in Europe in the last 12 years and are still falling. The drugs are coming here from South America through the Atlantic and crossing the Atlantic again to Europe and the US. The Netherlands and Spain remain the main entry points to Europe for Colombian cocaine, with most shipped into the UK via south-east ports. In the UK, a Home Office report released last month indicates that one of the most serious issues in the war against drugs remains corruption, and it recorded “a number of instances where UK law enforcement officers have acted corruptly and colluded with criminals,” although precise details are not given. Despite attempts to eradicate corrupt relations between serious criminal figures and figures throughout the criminal justice system, the report adds that syndicates remain adept at using the “corruption of insiders ... to monitor law enforcement actions and techniques.” The clearest indication that corruption in the police is not exclusively a Ghanaian problem. But, there’s more. Similar to US alcohol prohibition of the 1920’s, current drug prohibition legislation breeds police corruption and abuse in America and virtually in every country around the world. A 1998 report by the General Accounting Office of the US notes that on-duty police officers involved in drug-related corruption engage in serious criminal activities such as (1) conducting unconstitutional searches and seizures; (2) stealing money and/or drugs from drug dealers; (3) selling stolen drugs; (4) protecting drug operations; (5) providing false testimony; and (6) submitting false crime reports.
Approximately half of all police officers convicted as a result of FBI-led corruption cases between 1993 and 1997 were convicted for drug-related offenses and nationwide, and over 100 cases of drug-related corruption are prosecuted each year. Every one of the federal law enforcement agencies with significant drug enforcement responsibilities has seen an agent implicated.
One of America’s worst cases of drug-related police corruption occurred in California after an officer caught stealing eight pounds of cocaine from a police department’s evidence locker turned on his fellow officers to get a reduced sentence. Known as the ‘Rampart’ Scandal, over a hundred convictions were overturned as police misconduct, ranging from the planting of evidence to “confessions” obtained through beatings was uncovered. Officers were indicted on corruption charges, including torture, murder, drug dealing, and framing innocent people. The unit’s criminal behaviour became known as the ‘Rampart Way,’ a term referring to a predominantly poor, immigrant neighborhood in East Los Angeles patrolled – and during that time controlled – by the officers.
We may have our own versions of Rampart but let us not be rampant in our passion and haste to condemn wholesale. Let us take a step back and examine the situation for what it is. Our national obsession with bad news about ourselves is probably one of the psychological obstacles to rebuilding our national confidence. We remain a good, decent and hard working people.
