Details gleaned by the Daily Guide newspaper showed that the officers falling from the Amina saga are Superintendent Ernest Aboagye Sarpong, Commander-Accra Central District Police Station, ASP Amenenor Klutse, Duty Officer in charge of Criminal Investigations Department (CID) Headquarters cells; Chief Inspector Mensah Abrampah, Station Officer of Nima Police Station, Inspector John Yaw Airriah; Station Officer, Accra Central Police Station; Inspector M. W. Boa-Amponsem, Duty Inspector of CID Headquarters cells and some 12 others ranks (junior Personnel) from the CID Headquarters, Nima and Accra Central Police Stations.
The Amina-related story, now a politicized issue, has not been without side attractions since it hit the media landscape and the young man spoke on a radio station, corroborating the mass sex revelation.
The interdiction order followed a story about the revelation the suspect made that the Attorney-General had allegedly coached him to name some NPP stalwarts as being behind his earlier testimony corroborating the Amina mass rape story.
Following the story, the Inspector General of Police (IGP), Paul Tawiah Quaye, ordered a random search of police cells in Accra, an inspection which showed a number of mobile phones in possession of inmates across cells in the Accra Command.
Even before yesterday’s interdiction order, the Police Headquarters had ordered a search of the transcripts of the conversations Michael Ofosu Frimpong had with some media house. While the IGP dispatched his Public Affairs Director, Superintendent Kwesi Ofori, to seek the transcripts from Oman FM, the CID Director General, on the other hand, dispatched a Chief Superintendent of Police, Dennis Abade, Director of the Vetting and Crime Analysis (VCA) Unit and Chief Inspector J.B Darkwah to the offices of Daily Guide, a mission which yielded nothing.
The taskforce at the CID headquarters cells retrieved five mobile phones from inmates while it obtained three at the Nima Police Station.
At Accra Central, the team, headed by DCOP Timothy Ashiley, retrieved an unspecified number of phones as well as cigarettes from inmates.
Station officers at the CID cells and the Central Police Station were not spared the rod but DSP Aduhene Banieh escaped the Sword of Damocles by the whiskers when it was discovered that there were records to show that he had always ensured that such gadgets were not allowed in the cells. His Station Officers, who has been interdicted, was found not to be taking any leaf from his master’s book.
Michael Frimpong, following his call from the CID headquarters, was quickly transferred to Nsawam.
In his latest call from Nsawam, Frimpong spoke about how he was being denied adequate food. Police Public Affairs Director, Superintendent Kwesi Ofori told Daily Guide that the IGP’s order was part of a house cleansing exercise intended to rid the police of bad nuts.
He recalled that the latest interdiction brought to 37, the total number of officers interdicted this year alone. Last year, about 50 officers were indicated while some 30 were dismissed from the service.
Giving a background to what culminated in yesterday’s action, Mr. Ofori stated that on Friday March 11, 2011, the Police Chief constituted an emergency task force headed by DCOP Timothy Ashiley to randomly search some cells, following information that certain malpractices which affected the overall management of the Police Service were ongoing in police cells.
This was obviously a response to the Michael Frimpong calls from detention cells which were carried by the media, prompting security chiefs to squirm in their seats.
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