Editorial by Ghanaian Times: Encourage police-public collaboration

The Akatsi Police, collaborating with the police in neigh­bouring Togo, have retrieved human bones and a skull suspected to be those of a 28-year-old motor (Okada) rider who went missing on April 21, this year.

Kudos to both police commands for their efforts.

The Akatsi Police had earlier received a complaint from the father of the missing man, Louis Agbogli, a native of Atidzive and resi­dent of Akatsi, both within the Akatsi South Municipali­ty in the Volta Region.

Following the complaint, the police, as usual, started preliminary investigations with useful information from colleagues of the missing man who, together with him, plied their trade at Akatsi.

If this confession or admission is anything to go by, then we first express our sympathies to the bereaved family and friends and pray that you would get the strength to stand in this moment of grief.

We are consoled by the fact that it did not take too long to know the fate of Louis; sometimes others go missing and it takes years to find them dead or alive, most probably because the information and collabora­tion the police need to work effectively does not come readily.

The Akatsi murder case has therefore caused us to remind ourselves of the im­portance to collaborate with the police in their investiga­tions and also the need for the police to relate well with the public so that it does not become difficult for them to enjoy the needed collabora­tion.

Sometimes members of the public fear to deal with the police, particularly by divulging some information to them for fear that the police would turn round and unmask them to crimi­nals who would try to harm them later.

Some of these people have either personal experi­ences or heard about other people’s ordeal.

We know the police are trained to keep mute over the details of those who assist them mostly in crimi­nal cases, yet some of them violate their oath of secrecy or whatever they call it and put the lives of collabora­tors, particularly ordinary members of the public, in danger.

This happens especially when money changes hands later, they say.

We, however, know that there are fine police per­sonnel who would not let collaborators or the general public down no matter what.

It is these ones that we take as our reference to encourage the public to help the police to unravel the myth around cases for speedy trial and bring them to closure.

We can conjecture that the Akatsi Police are fine with the Okada riders and the en­tire community, hence their finding it easy to discover and retrieve the skeletal re­mains of Louis Agbogli.

While we appeal to the police to always make the public have confidence in them that they are there to ensure law and order, there­by ensuring public safety, we expect the public to give the police maximum assistance to do that.

But we pray that the Police Administration would sanc­tion any policeman or wom­an who would do anything to undermine police-public collaboration.