Recently, there was news that personnel of the Ghana Police Service at the Nima Police station had managed to ‘settle’ a case involving a woman who had pressed a heated iron into the vaginal area of a seven-year girl.
When the police were confronted, they claimed that they ‘settled’ the horrific crime because family members and the community had come to intercede, and that they were ‘monitoring’ the situation.
This incident is not isolated. These days, a visit to most of our magistrate and circuit courts, even in the busiest police jurisdictions, would find them empty.
The personnel of the Ghana Police Service are busy ‘settling’ criminal cases, and letting off people who have committed crimes.
Some time back, somebody decided to introduce alternative dispute resolution into our laws, and into the Ghana Police Service. The Service has now capitalized on this loophole to be settling increasingly audacious crimes, such as the one cited above.
Incidents such as assaults, domestic abuse, even stealing, and many more, are experiencing death throes at police stations, and this must be a matter of some concern to the public, because in the future, in more likelihood, the criminals the police are letting off would engage in even more daring crimes.
We believe that it is time some kind of monitoring systems were put in place to establish how many reports of crimes sent to police stations, find their way into the judicial system.
Otherwise, we can state that Ghana has established a Police Service where the personnel have now turned the combatting of crime into a private fiefdom for making money to line their private pockets.
(Editorial of the Daily Searchlight of 1st December, 2025)
