Police slams Alliance for Responsible Citizenship for making a fool of them

The Greater Accra Police Command has slammed the Alliance For Responsible Citizenship (AFRC) for making mockery of the police after the group failed to embark on its much-publicized demonstration yesterday, Tuesday.

The Police had deployed men at the assembly ground fully prepared to give adequate protection to the protesters who had announced their intention to demonstrate against the National Media Commission (NMC) over sanctions imposed on some 131 radio stations across the country, but not a single member of the group stepped his foot at the ground.

The police and the AFRC have been engaged in a tug of war over the past weeks as they’ve failed to agree on a common route to take during the demonstration.

The Police proceeded to court on November 20, 2017 and got the High Court presided over by her Lordship Justice Sophia Rosetta Bernasko to restrain the group from holding the demonstration through the Flagstaff House, Parliament House, National Media Commission and then the National Communications Authority as they planned. Instead, they were asked to stick to the traditional routes provided by the police.

However, Director of Communication of AFRC, Eric Adjei, in an interview with Kasapa News Tuesday, said the move by the law enforcement agency is informed by government’s intentions to frustrate their efforts.

But the Public Relations Officer of the Greater Accra Police Command, Afia Tenge responded that the claims by the group is baseless urging the public to disregard them.

“These institutions they intended to take their protest to are not sited in one area and so it was going to be so much of a bother to the police because we’ll have to be spending time moving from one place to another and so we had to proceed to court to make a case. We explained to the court the security implications that would have been involved in this protest and the fact that we didn’t have enough men to police the demonstrators through the numerous routes they had planned to take.

“We stated clearly in our press release that we had provided security for them ahead of today’s demonstration. We actually deployed men to the venue they were going to assembly, but not even one of the demonstrators stepped foot there and so they were simply making mockery of the Police,” Afia Tenge said.