Restore police post and punish vandals

It is quite an interesting story; I am talking about the pathetic decision by Mr. John Kudalor, the Inspector-General of the Ghana Police Service, to withdraw all law-enforcement personnel from Donkorkrom township in the Okwawu district of the Eastern Region (See “IGP Withdraws All Police Personnel from Donkorkrom” Starrfmonline.com / Ghanaweb.com 8/19/16).

The order follows the reported torching of the township’s police station, after two police officers arrested and detained there and charged with having attacked and robbed a Ghana Commercial Bank’s bullion van were alleged to have escaped from the station’s cells.

Some Donkorkrom residents, it appears, had logically concluded that a police service, or force, that could not police its own thievish personnel was not worth maintaining in the township. As of this writing, a combined team of riot-quelling police and military personnel was reported to have descended on the Afram Plains township with the objective of restoring peace and stability.

The two police officers alleged to have escaped from the station’s cells were also reported to have been rearrested in the Okwawu commercial capital of Nkawkaw and transported to Koforidua, the Eastern Region’s capital, for prosecution.

It was the alleged escape of the two unnamed police officers that reportedly touched off a firestorm of violent protests at Donkorkrom, because the youths of the township believed that it was the alleged suspects’ own uniformed colleagues who had let them off the hook. An unknown number of police vehicles were also reported to have been set alight.

Deputizing for IGP Kudalor, Mr. Prosper Agblor, the Director-General of the Criminal Investigations Division of the Ghana Police Service, stated that law-enforcement services in Donkorkrom township would not be restored until residents had repaired the damage done to the police station, as well as paid for the torched vehicles.

Now, this is the sort of gut reaction that one expects from an unenlightened street urchin, and not from either the Inspector-General of the Ghana Police Service or the Director-General of the Criminal Investigations Division (CID) of the Ghana Police Service. Rather, what Messrs. Kudalor and Agblor ought to be doing presently is to be working out the details of the acquisition of temporary housing for the Donkorkrom-stationed police personnel, and then having the arsonists hunted down, rounded up and vigorously prosecuted.

Those forensically established to have participated in such acts of vandalism should then be made to pay for the cost of the damage caused to both the physical plant or building housing the police station, as well as the vehicles torched by the forensically identified culprits.

The collective punishment of having police personnel withdrawn from Donkorkrom has absolutely no basis in common sense and the imperative need to ensuring that the reported acts of vandalism did not escalate into other neighboring town and villages.

While the members of our police service, like the rest of their human kind are not angels or infallible, nevertheless, we expect candidates selected to be trained as law-enforcement agents to be of higher moral standards than the majority of the citizens and residents they are charged to protect and bring to book, should any of them be found to be in contravention of the laws of the land.

In this connection, we equally expect that thorough investigations will be conducted into the circumstances leading to the escape of the two police officers alleged to have attacked and robbed the GCB’s bullion vehicle. For all we know, this racket could be part of an extensive network involving far more than just two law-enforcement officers.