Let The Police Wake Up

 

During President John Mahama’s engagement with the media at Jubilee House recently, he proffered a way out of the occasional brutal assault by the police on journalists performing their legitimate assignments by law enforcement officers.

His attention was especially drawn to the incident at the Ablekuma North re-run. While he took exception to the anomaly, he advised that the police engage the media with a view to obviating such occurrences.

The country witnessed on social media how a senior police officer, indeed a Divisional Commander, assaulted a journalist during the election re-run. This was what prompted the concern from a journalist.

Although the Police Administration issued a statement explaining that the defaulting senior officer had been interdicted, many were      doubtful such an action was really taken against the cop.

These days, many do not believe statements from the police.

As if that is not enough for Ghanaians, social media splashed a nasty scene from Tamale a couple of days ago, the subject of this commentary. Students on a peaceful demonstration at the Tamale Technical University over school fees hike by the authorities clashed with the police.

Some of the students suffered various degrees of injuries when the police pounced upon them. With young boys and girls now in tertiary institutions, it can only be imagined the ages of the students at the receiving end of exuberant police officers who used their batons lavishly.

One of the students was graphically showed being kicked by a uniformed cop, a video which parents should not see. So bad was it that the images and videos were spread across social media as a protest. Expectedly, the crude management of the demonstration by the police attracted national conversation, with most people demanding that the police be given a new orientation on civility.

We could not resist remembering the apartheid era in South Africa where high-handed cops assaulted citizens with iron fists, actions which sometimes led to fatalities, when the Tamale police brutality made a showing on social media.

With the identity of the assaulting cops clearly showed on social media, we await a statement from the Police Administration and the action that is going to be taken against those found guilty of meting out the brutish conduct on the students.

Such statements might fail in calming tempers of especially parents.

The training manuals of the police at both recruit and officer cadet levels must be upgraded to include civic education within the context of a democratic setting.

Police officers should shed the colonial days’ standard of high-handed law enforcement techniques.

Law enforcement officers should note that they are subservient to the civil authorities, their salaries charged on the public purse.

Such uncouth conduct by some police officers, when they are deployed to manage demonstrations, should have no place in our democratic setting.

Police commanders under who such personnel operate should be held responsible for acts of unruliness and brutalities.

It is only when decent conduct and proper civic education are imparted to recruits and cadets, not forgetting punishing defaulting officers, would such animalistic behaviour stop.

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