Ghana Police has wrong mentality when it comes to crowd control – Dr Norman

Police brutalities will not end if officers are not held accountable, Criminologist

Recruitment of unqualified persons into police service blamed for police brutalities

Citizens have the right to express their anger toward government, Dr Norman

The Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Institute for Security, Disaster and Emergency Studies, Dr Ishmael Norman, says the Ghana Police service is using the wrong manual for crowd control.

According to him, the manual the police are currently using for crowd control is not meant for the peaceful management of a conflict.

“The manual they are using is not meant for peaceful management or de-escalation of conflict between section of the public and towards Police station.

“The manual they are using is the Incident and Police Order Management Manuel. It is designed to provide direction and information to assist commanders, planners, advisors to prepare for and manage where there is risk,” he is quoted in a report by 3news.com.

Dr Norman who was speaking to Dzifa Bampoh on TV’s Key Points said the police is wrong for using this because “you do not deal with citizens’ occasional outbursts towards their government to show their displeasure with this kind of manual.”

For this reason, he believes the police have a wrong mentality so far as crowd control is concerned.

“The whole mentality of the Ghana Police when it comes to crowd control, when it comes to citizens expressing their anger towards their government is wrong.”

But Dr Norman urged the police to adopt a different module that will help them use the appropriate means to calm an irate crowd.

“What they need is a Critical Incident Decision-making Module that will take them through, systematically, how you go about de-escalating the anger of the population against their government. They have a right to be angry towards their government, towards a Police unit that is not doing right things.”

Speaking on the same issue, the Director, Faculty of Academic Affairs and Research at the Kofi Annan International Peacekeeping Training Centre, Professor Kwesi Aning, blamed the case of police brutalities in the country on the recruitment of unqualified persons into the Police service due to their affiliations to the party in government.

Prof. Aning who was speaking about the clash in Nkoranza, following the death of Albert Donkor, on News 360 on TV3 earlier this week, said “It is not just an unfortunate situation, it is criminal behaviour.

“I think we are reaping what we have sown. People who would ordinarily not qualified to be part of the Police service who have been brought in through political figures and who feel that they have political god-fathers outside the remit of the Police Service and therefore, they can misbehave and nothing would be done to them,” he added.

He further warned, “I am really sorry to say, I have a message for them, something will be done to [them], [they] will be punished, [they] will be found out and if it means dismissal from the Police service you will be dismissed.”

Also sharing is view on the issue in an interview on TV3’s Mid-Day news, a Criminologist at the Cambridge University, Professor Justice Tankebe said Ghana will not see an end to police brutalities anytime soon if officers are not held accountable for their actions

“When we have public order situations and we send Police officers there fully armed, we should expect nothing but what we so often see, which is the killing of protestors. As long as we lack the institutional arrangement to hold officers to account, to minimize the use of excessive force, I am afraid there will be many more of such situations.”

He added “Do the Police have the legal rights sometimes to use deadly force? We will say, yes they do have that right. But what happens when they do that? I think what we have in Ghana is that anytime the Police have shot and killed civilians they suspected of being armed robbers we just accept the Police’s narrative that there was an intelligence-led action that resulted in the killing of armed robbers.”

He believes the police need to account for their excesses even though the law permits them to use excessive force in bringing chaotic situations under control.