We Must Modernize Our ‘Painti Ma Me Na Me Nto’ Police

Of late, Ghana has been inundated with reports of armed robbery and other sophisticated crimes, mostly of a violent
nature.
The crimes seem to center mainly around financial centers like gold dealers, foreign currency operations, and
mining, particularly Chinese miners.
To combat this rising canker, the Daily Searchlight recommends that we overhaul the investigative practices of the
Ghana Police Service, by bringing in more modern ideas of detection, as well as forensic science.
Like it or not, the Ghana Police Service as it stands today cannot be described, by any stretch of the imagination, as
a ‘modern’ organization.
What we have is an institution that makes pretentions of modernity, but has little or no investigative prowess.
Worse, it is manned by arguably the most corrupt, unethical and outright conscienceless set of men and women that
can be found in any organization in Ghana.
Virtually any and everybody who comes in contact with personnel of the Ghana Police Service, after a while, would
come to the conclusion that this institution is deeply troubled, and would benefit from a whole-scale dismissal of all
its human resource capacity, to be replaced with a new set of men and women who know what policing is about, and
better, who believe in service with conscience and ethics.
Indeed, there has often been examples, in the past, where police officers were identified as the people responsible for
some of the armed robberies. One police officer was recently identified for shooting another police officer dead
during a robbery attack against a bullion van. The shooter himself was later taken out of his hospital bed by
unidentified persons, believed to be police personnel, and massacred.
To combat armed robbery, therefore, there is a need to ensure that we, first and foremost, make an effort to change
police attitudes in this country, and second, train them in the modern art of forensic detective work.
Otherwise, we would remain where we are.
(Editorial of the Daily Searchlight of 25 th November, 2024).