The police service and charity

By Kofi Akordor
The Ghana Police Service, under the Police Service Act 1970 (Act 350), has a clear mandate to maintain law and order. This translates into crime prevention and detection, apprehension and prosecution of offenders and to generally enforce the law to ensure that the security and safety of the citizenry are safeguarded.
Briefly, by their mandate, the police are to protect all and also to ensure that all conform to the laws of the land, a necessity that would guarantee internal stability, security and social harmony.
This is a broad mandate that, as would be expected, can only be executed effectively, if the Ghana Police Service is well resourced both materially and with the requisite personnel.
With a population of approximately 24 million and a police/civilian ratio of 1:1,200, the police service is overwhelmingly outnumbered and could, therefore, do with additional personnel. But this is constrained by a more serious problem – materials and logistics.
The authorities including government officials have always maintained that even though there is the need for additional hands, they can only do so if some major challenges facing the service are removed. These include inadequate office and residential accommodation.
Most of our police stations are housed in rented premises or in buildings constructed in the colonial times when the numbers were small and the mandate of the service very limited. The history of the service itself points to an institution that had as its core mandate, the protection of the interests of the colonial power.
After independence, even though numbers increased and the mandate and scope of the service increased, there was very little in terms of improved infrastructure. Nowhere was this evident more than the residential accommodation for service personnel. The cubicle for a family person with wife/wives and children is so small that the difference between them and those they have consigned into custody is very little.
Office accommodation for the service is very poor. During the Acheampong regime, a brave effort was made to build modern headquarters for all the regional commands. It is sad to say that more than 40 years after that regime came to an end, none of the regional police headquarters have been completed.
That lives us with the question: “Where do we place the Ghana Police Service in our scheme of things?” Efforts to address the situation are always piecemeal and the budgets for infrastructure are so meagre that at the end of the day, the effects are insignificant.
This has forced the administration to rent private premises for office and accommodation or simply leave the service personnel to sort things out on their own. That is where our problem lies. Apart from the inconvenience to service personnel, this type of arrangement greatly compromises the integrity and neutrality of the service in executing its mandate impartially and effectively.
The closest this current administration came to solving this accommodation problem confronting the service and other security agencies was the STX Housing initiative which targeted 30,000 housing units for the security agencies. It seems the death knell has been sounded for that project, unless the government can quickly put together another package with fresh partners to push forward its housing agenda.
Accommodation apart, the service is seriously constrained by lack of basic tools of their profession. Occasionally, we hear pleas from the authorities calling on individuals and corporate bodies to come to the aid of the service, which receive positive responses.
Public response have been varied. They include the donation of things like torches, reflector jackets, Wellington boots, computers, communication gadgets and vehicles for patrol duties. While these gestures are laudable and need commendation, they live in their trail, tendencies that could easily corrupt the service in the discharge of its mandate for obvious reasons.
Remember you cannot bite the hand that feeds you and the police service would be the last to show ingratitude to its benefactors whether as individuals or corporate bodies. Without trying to put the integrity of the service on the line, the police service is the last public institution that should be sustained on charity.
The reasons as stated earlier are obvious. Even a lift from a taxi driver will have its consequences that would not augur well for combating crime or dispensing justice in a fair, firm and impartial manner.
Individuals and corporate bodies can extend their corporate social responsibility to areas such as schools, health facilities, orphanages or even the fire and prison services. But these largesse should not be extended to the police service, otherwise we should not expect them to deliver on their mandate without bending the rules.
Just like week, Global Haulage Company donated 500 pieces of reflector jackets to the Motor Traffic and Transport Unit (MTTU) of the Ghana Police Service. That was a noble gesture by all means that should be commended. But what happens if say, a driver of Global Haulage Company should flout traffic regulations? Anything can happen but please do not tell me the law will take its natural course, because that course has been obscured by a gift of jackets. I say for the second time, you cannot bite the hand that feeds you, and they say, one good turn deserves another.
So what stops people with dubious minds or agenda from rushing to make donations to the police before putting their grand diabolic designs into action? That is why some of us would wish that the state takes full responsibility for equipping certain state institutions, especially where national security and justice delivery are concerned.
Those office accommodation structures started by the Acheampong regime more than four decades ago that have remained monuments of neglect should be reactivated and completed as early as possible. The government should also explore other avenues to raise capital to build residential accommodation for our policemen and women. The idea of the police service receiving material donations from individuals and corporate institutions should be discouraged.
The Ghana Police Service should not be allowed to rely on the public for logistic support since it opens the service to exploitation and abuse. The strength of the nation depends on a well-trained and highly-equipped police service. No amount spent on the service should be considered misplaced. All governments have expressed their determinaton and commitment to provide the service with the requisite logistic support. But the service could sill do with more vehicles, communication equipment and other accroutments of their trade for effective performance.
If we cannot do for others, at least we must ensure the police service operates as an independent and autonomous institution as much as possible. So that when they fail they do not feed us with excuses.
Our national security, our safety and protection as citizens and the sanctity of our laws and regulations cannot be sacrificed on the altar of charity.

fokofi@yahoo.co.uk
kofiakordor.blogspot.com