PERISCOPE DEPTH
…With Our Publisher
“Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people.”- Eleanor Roosevelt
10/11/2021
It is a fact that a police officer has the right to invite another person to a police station. It is also a fact, however, that that individual can decline/refuse to honour the invitation by the police officer. I believe that that is the position of the law, and if there is anybody out there, including our lawyers, who say that my position is fueled by ignorance, that person/s have every right to put forth any statute, legislation or case law that says that an individual invited to a police station must, ipso facto, comply with the request by the police officer.
The situation is however very different when a person is placed under arrest by a police officer. When a police officer arrests you, you have an immediate duty to comply with the arrest. Therefore, if one refuses an invitation by a police officer to accompany him to a police station, the police officer is empowered to, that is may, arrest that person upon reasonable suspicion that the person has committed a crime or is about to commit a crime. If he does not have a reasonable basis to arrest you, he may not, but the police officer has no right to assume that you would follow him to a police station merely because he has invited you.
Invitations to the police station, and arrests are not the same. They are accompanied by different bundles of rights, and obligations, as stated above.
What is the purpose of an invitation to the police station? Obviously, the police may require information. But the individual is not obliged to give the police information, particularly when that information may incriminate that individual. The question is, why can’t the police interview people at their homes, in their offices, or wherever they find them, for the information, instead of at the police station? Going to a police station can occasion waste of time and discomfort, and I would think that as far as possible, the police should do well to avoid creating discomfort for people they come in contact with. The Ghana Police Service, at present, is adequately resourced to be proactive in this matter. It should be able to walk to the evidence, instead of expecting the evidence to walk into the police station.
When a police officer decides, however, to arrest an individual merely because the individual has refused/declined an invitation, he ought to be careful. This power to arrest must be exercised with care. Article 14. (5) of the 1992 Constitution states;
“A person who is unlawfully arrested, restricted or detained by any other person shall be entitled to compensation from that other person.” If you are a police officer, and you are arresting an individual for personal gratification, you should be careful. It may come with a price.
Police officers in Ghana do not enjoy any special immunity. So that if a police officer goes about arresting people without just cause, he may, at a point, be held personally liable for his mistakes.
A police officer who is arresting an individual has the duty to inform the individual of his rights to a lawyer and why he is being restrained.
Once at the police station, a person is not required to give any information or statement to the police. The police, however, have the duty to inform the person of their rights, including the right not to give any information to the police, and the fact that the information may be used against the giver of the information, particularly when requiring an investigation caution statement and/or a charge caution statement from the person. I must emphasize that you can choose not to provide any statement.
If you refuse to provide a statement, the police however reserves the right to charge you before a court of law, not because you refused to give a statement, but because the police believe they have a prima facie case against you.
In Ghana, the law frowns on self-incrimination. Even in court, an accused person is not required to make a statement either admitting or denying an offense, if he is so minded.
Article 19. (10) of the 1992 Constitution states;
“No person who is tried for a criminal offense shall be compelled to give evidence at the trial.”
So, not even a court of law can require you to speak. If a court of law cannot require you to speak, how much more the police? The police have no power to require a statement from you, by force.
Again, the courts and the law frowns on statements taken from people against their will, which tend to incriminate them. They are known as confession statements. Such statements have to meet a stringent test by the dictates of Ghana’s Evidence Act, 1975 (NRCD 323) before they can be admitted as evidence in a criminal prosecution.
First, by Section 120 of NRCD 323, such a statement must be made voluntarily. It must also be made before an independent witness who can understand the language spoken by the accused person, can read and understand the language in which the statement is made, and can read and write English.
The independent witness must certify, at the end, that the statement was made by the accused person, that the statement was made voluntarily, in his presence, and that the contents were fully understood by the accused person.
There is a plethora of case law on Section 120 of the Evidence Act, and I do not intend to go into them because they are not germane to the current discussion, but suffice it to state that even if one is able to bring a person to a police station, one cannot insist that the person talks to the police. Any such statement, acquired by force, ruse or subterfuge, may turn out to be completely useless in a court of law.
I am writing all these as a consequence of the totally fruitless and misplaced debate over an invitation extended to the Member of Parliament for MadinaHYPERLINK “https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madina_(Ghana_parliament_constituency)” Constituency, Francis-Xavier Kojo Sosu by the police, and the invocation of immunities under Article 117 and 118 of the 1992 Constitution.
In my opinion, Lawyer Sosu need not have invoked the constitutional privileges to begin with. Like any ordinary man, by law, he can refuse to accept any invitation from the police. If the police wants to arrest him, that is okay, but he can refuse to give any statement to the police about whatever tape the police claim they have. He is not, at law, required to give any statement to the police, explanatory of his actions, if he is not minded to do so. If the police believe that they have evidence on the commission of a crime, they can charge him, and serve him with a criminal summons.
The phenomenon of ‘invitations to police stations’ by the Ghana Police Service in this country is especially problematic and troublesome. The police use these invitations as a tool of punishment. They can invite you to the police station and make you sit for hours on end, with the victim not knowing exactly his legal position, whether he is under arrest or not.
In any case, the police know, or they should know, that any person can refuse to incriminate himself. If the police are pursuing Sosu as a suspect in an investigation, then they are doing so with the intention to mount a prosecution against Sosu. Sosu is under no legal obligation to assist them in this quest. The police can pursue all lines of investigation including having the tape analyzed, speaking to other people on the tape, and others.
And the police ought to be mindful of the fact that if the arrest turns out to be frivolous, it can lead to consequences for the Ghana Police Service under Article 14. (5) of the 1992 Constitution.
Footnote
I first heard of the appointment of DCOP George Akuffo Dampare as acting Inspector General of Police on radio. I believe I have met the gentleman once, at the Greater Accra Regional Police Headquarters. If he is the same gentleman, then he was the Regional Police Commander then. My impression of Mr. Dampare was that he was a fine person, and he looked rather youthful for a Regional Police Commander. He was soft-spoken, and what struck me was that he could easily pass as one of his constables.
Soon after his appointment as acting IGP, I met a lawyer of the very highest repute one evening, and he had the best of words to describe Mr. Dampare.
When I heard of his run-in with the so-called men of God, I felt a certain pride, but I also felt a tinge of worry. It is surely time for the so-called fake pastors threatening and blackmailing people in the name of prophesy to be confronted, but I also tend to feel alarm when speech begins to be infringed.
I believe that Mr. Dampare has it in himself to become one of the finest IGPs that Ghana has ever produced. He is reasonably young, well-trained and educated, and self-made. He can take the Ghana Police Service into the modern age, which that service has willfully refused to embrace in spite of thirty years of democracy. The Ghana Police Service does tend to obey the political master of the day. Thus, both ruling parties have been abusing the Ghana Police Service and have also been victims of the Police Service in turns. Unfortunately, the lessons from that victimization only last till power changes. Then the victims become the oppressors.
I do think that Mr. Dampare should be careful about sacrificing his image on the altar of political expediency. Some people would expect that of him, that he would sell his soul for an appointment. I believe, sincerely, that his uniform is worthier than that.
(Periscope Depth is published every Wednesday in the Daily Searchlight.)
(You can follow stories in the Daily Searchlight on www.thedailysearchlight.com or Daily Searchlight on our Facebook home page. Write to us on searchlightnews@yahoo.co.uk).
