Police wallowing in misery – K. B. Quantson

Ghana’s first National Security Coordinator and former Commissioner of Police in charge of the Criminal Investigations Department (CID), K. B. Quantson says the Police are living in abject misery.

The former director of the Bureau of National Investigations (BNI) told a forum in Accra that Ghanaians must try to understand the living conditions of the Police so that their criticisms against the officers will be more informed.

“…A man and his six children cramped in one colonial chamber with a deep-freezer in the veranda; you go further on, they live in huts with no curtains, [and sleep on] mats. In some places they have to buy their own pencils and so on,” he lamented.

According Mr. Quantson, “if you have an idea about this, then wherever you are and whatever influence you can bring to bear, can be accelerated because if you don’t factor in that side, then you’ll look at them with only one side of it”.

As far as the perception of the Police service as a highly corrupt institution is concerned, the former Executive Secretary of the Narcotics Control Board (NACOB) said the officers are not totally to blame.

“Everybody is an expert [at] bashing the police… [that] they are corrupt…but I’ve always been asking this question: ‘who corrupts who?’ The Police man cannot corrupt himself. It is we the public who corrupt them,” he asserted.

He said the solution lies with both the Police and the citizens agreeing to eschew corrupt tendencies.

“It is only a society which is corrupt that can accommodate a corrupt Police Service…we should all be partners in solving the problem,” he counseled.

According to him, “There’s a popular saying that the people get the government they deserve and so [it] is [with] the Police. I’ve been a Police man and I know what it is and I know what happens in other countries. No British Policeman will stop a British driver and the first thing [that happens is that] the Driver will meet the Policeman behind the vehicle. Here it is a ritual. As soon as they stop you, both of them agree and gravitate towards each other. What [ever] business they go to transact there is everybody’s guess”.