Calling Police Council Over! (1)

We are constrained to communicate to the Chairman of the Police Council via this medium on a subject which is central to both the administration of law enforcement and indeed justice by extension.

We have chosen this medium, editorial, hoping that our humble yet critical effort would highlight the shortcomings of law enforcement – a crucial appendage of governance in any given civilized dispensation which we are supposed to be.

The turnaround the President and his government are feverishly working towards cannot be achieved if the visage of policing is not tackled effectively.

Our decision to deal with this subject is informed by snippets of information we have received about how you intend to deal with the menace of land guards in the country especially the Greater Accra Region.

A few weeks ago, given the phenomenal success your government has chalked in the war against illegal mining, galamsey, we demanded you replicate the template in tackling the menace of land guards. We are happy to note that you are on the verge of descending on the hoodlums who have indeed over-run our law enforcement system for want of a better expression. The reasons behind the success of the hoodlums are obvious: top cops, not all, have compromised their integrity for large acres of land.

Without doubt, changes are being noticed in various spheres of the country’s life even though more needs to be done to achieve a total alteration of the negativities of yesteryears.

Success would elude the President if the law enforcement machinery is not rid of bad nuts especially at the top echelon of the system. Over the years, these bad nuts, and they are many, have made it impossible for their subordinates to discharge their functions to God and country.

These bad nuts, they are known, are in league with wicked estate developers, bad chiefs with access to stool lands and the most dangerous in the network, land guards.

Some serving top superior officers have vast acres of land; properties they acquired by protecting the interests of crooks in the land industry. Probing these acquisitions would lead to a stinking can of worms, we can bet you.

One of our reporters chanced upon uniformed law enforcement officers in the house of a known bad chief with hordes of land guards at his beck and call in the Tema Region.

Woe betides cops who arrest such land guards – their paymasters wielding the power to cause their immediate transfer in previous administrations though. They would be ordered to release them no sooner than they are arrested because they are connected to the top of the policing system.

The good cops can only watch on as the fault lines deepen through the actions of the bad ones whose flashy lifestyles say it all about their bad ways.

A couple of days ago, we broke the story about a significant step taken by the Police Administration- preparatory to the embarkation of the war against land guards.

While we congratulate the government without whose demand the action could have been still-born, we would be quick to add that this is only a tip of the iceberg. A total overhaul of the police system must be undertaken if the objective of the government is to be achieved. Being a critical subject, we wish to devote two editions to it; today’s being the maiden.