A piece of shoddy job

Last week, one of the dailies carried a story about the arrest of a Nigerian-registered vehicle carrying fake Ghanaian currency notes in GH¢20 denominations amounting to GH¢1.096.240.00. According to the report, the police, upon tip-off, trailed the vehicle until the driver went to park at a hotel at Ada and left for an unknown place. The story said after waiting overnight in vain for the return of the driver, the police drove the vehicle with registration number GH409-LND to the police headquarters in Accra while still looking for the driver. The question is, why were the police in haste to drive away the vehicle? The world is for those who have the patience to wait and in crime investigation you need a lot of patience and tact to achieve your objective. What happens if no one shows up to claim ownership of the vehicle? What happens if someone surfaces to report of the loss of his vehicle and deny knowledge of the fake currency, since it was allegedly found in the vehicle in his absence? It should be obvious that the police have bungled an otherwise useful operation because they have failed to exhibit one of the cardinal principles of a good predator – patience. If members of the anti-armed robbery squad of the Ghana Police Service knew they could not wait long enough to effect the arrest of the driver, why didn’t they arrest the suspect anywhere along the road from Aflao and Ada? Very often, the police are in haste to announce a successful operation when in fact the reverse is the case. In this particular case, the police could have withdrawn the physical presence at the hotel while patiently maintaining strict surveillance on the vehicle to see what happens next. It could take hours, days, weeks or even months but surely the driver or any other person will surface after mistakenly believing that the police have lost interest in the vehicle. Second, no lives were at risk so there was no need for haste in this case. Sometimes in their haste, the police only succeed in arresting the “Aplanke” and not the master. This has been seen in many drug cases where small couriers are paraded as big catches while the barons escape justice. Perhaps we need to cultivate the professional expertise of others who have the patience to wait until their prey surfaces. The arrest and prosecution of Eric Amoateng, a former Member of Parliament for Nkoranza North, is a case in point. Amoateng had earlier forwarded seven boxes of pottery to Newark Liberty International Airport from London which were found to contain 136 pounds of heroin with a street value of $6 million. The US security monitored Amoateng and his accomplice, one Nii Okai Adjei, when they arrived in that country, took delivery of the goods and sent them to a self-storage facility at Staten Island. The security officials did not rush. They waited until the following day, when Amoateng showed to collect the goods, before he was arrested. Amoateng was convicted on drug charges and jailed 10 years on December 15, 2007. About a year or so ago, the police claimed they had arrested a dressmaker who had been designing and sewing special dresses for drug couriers. What was to be gained in that arrest, if the police could not do a more meticulous work by arresting the customers of the dressmaker? As recent as April, this year, officials of the Narcotics Control Board (NACOB) arrested a Moroccan woman, Fatima Elouardi, at the Kotoka International Airport (KIA), with 2.7 kilogrammes of what was suspected to be cocaine. This woman is known to be working for Youssef Salloum which is no secret to the security agencies. But again they were very enthusiastic in arresting the agent and allowed the main man to escape arrest because of pure carelessness. Our security agencies had earlier been given intelligence information about the movement of the Moroccan woman and her cargo. They could have done a better job by monitoring her movement when she arrived at KIA and continue to do so until she clears her luggage and deliver it to her contractor before making an arrest. But as stated earlier, NACOB officials were overzealous and like in similar cases jumped the gun by arresting the courier and left the baron off the hook. Some of these blunders are so amateurish that some people are casting doubts on the integrity of some of our security agents. Events which preceded Fatima’s arrival and arrest at the KIA on April 5, 2012, clearly indicate that Salloum her accomplice was to meet her at the airport and possibly collect the luggage. So why should our security agents give Fatima that hint that she was being monitored? Is there anyone within the security apparatus who might have warned Salloum about the trap in wait for him? These are not just operational failures but smack of collaboration with the enemy by some unknown people within the set-up, more so, when it was revealed that Salloum had a narrow escape in another drug case a year or so earlier. As it is now, the country might have lost another opportunity to get to the bottom of the drug business which is spreading its tentacles on the west coast of the continent. In the same vein, the anti-armed robbery squad may have a long wait in their hands looking for the gang that had brought in fake currency to dilute our financial regime, something that could have been avoided with a more professional approach to duty. fokofi@yahoo.co.uk kofiakordor.blogspot.com