Police training recruits only sweep, weed and march – Forensic expert laments

Head of Forensics Department at the University of Cape Coast, Dr. Richmond Afoakwa, has exposed the poor training that police officers but especially investigators, receive before being pushed into the field to work.

He lamented the lack of capacity of officers of the Ghana Police Service but particularly the Criminal Investigation Department (CID), to adequately process crimes scenes and launch proper investigations.

According to him, police investigators lack these essential crime-fighting techniques because they are not equipped with the right tools at the Police Training Academy.

The curriculum for training detectives in Ghana, he said, is nothing short of appalling and stressed that the curriculum for generally training the police service in the country is even worse.

Police recruits at the Training Academy, he said, spend much of their time sweeping, weeding and marching.

“Go there and see. Proper criminal investigation, proper criminology, proper community policing is not taught. That is where we have to be looking at,” he said.

Speaking on TV3‘s Saturday news analysis programme, The Key Points, Dr. Afoakwa appealed to government to consider retooling investigators of the CID as a priority.

He lamented that criminals can today break into any home and cart away all of the owner’s valuables, and in the process rape the homeowner’s wife and daughter and go scot-free because the police lack the capacity to pick up and follow the trails of such crimes.

“We do not have the tools to do proper investigation to find the culprits of these crimes,” he said.

“So I want to hammer home that the CID has to be resourced and retooled to be able to do proper crime scene investigation.”

According to him, last two years DCOP Maame Tiwaa Addo-Danquah invited him to collaborate with the Service and start a Crime Scene Management programme for investigators, which is currently ongoing to ensure officers receive adequate training in all facets of the investigation.