User-Friendly And Unfriendly Policing

Without the police, we cannot sleep. Indeed, we are not safe. Yet some policing is a public nightmare. And so as the Graphic (Saturday, March 12, 2011, p. 7) praised them, the Daily Guide (Friday, March 11, p. 4) was criticising them.

‘Police Seek Civilian Support In Fighting Crime’ read a headline in the same issue of the Daily Guide (p. 15). Actually, policing succeeds most with the cooperation of the public, and logically should be forthcoming as the public achieves protection that way.

Ironically, it so happens that the behaviour of some police officers makes public support impossible. Just imagine the following scenario.

A 10-year-old girl literally runs into a vehicle of a group of academics returning from a weekend retreat. She is rushed to the hospital by the driver and his passenger, accompanied by a witness at the accident scene. Luckily, she is treated and discharged.

A police corporal, called to the hospital, not the scene of the accident, decides to detain the driver, an over-sixty retired public servant for three hours before asking him to write a statement.

I mean, a retired professor, an active associate professor, a senior lecturer and former diplomat, two lecturers and two assistant lecturers were all unofficially detained for three hours because they couldn’t abandon their colleague, with a policeman showing signs of determination to misuse his power.

The poor retiree had to make a few trips to the mountains before the case was finally arbitrated, with compensation for the girl victim. By all indications, the agreement could have come without the three-hour detention.

Reasons for the appalling behaviour of the corporal were basically two. He had been angered because a lecturer wondered loudly why a policeman would seek statements at the hospital and not the police station.

Secondly, the corporal had been angered by the driver’s insistence on carrying girl, mother and policeman together in his car from the hospital to the police station.

The speculation was that the policeman would have preferred driver-policeman situation to enable him to extort money from the latter.

Meanwhile, the driver’s colleagues insisted upon staying with him all the time, thus blocking further any bribery two-man situation.

The corporal heightened his ‘I’ll show them where power lies’ intentions when he reneged on his earlier promise to interview the driver first since he knew the victim and her parents who stayed nearby. He ended up detaining the driver for three hours.

Make no mistake that these were some arrogant academics throwing their weight about trying to bully a police corporal; nothing of that. They were just trying to support a colleague and expecting the police to be civil.

In the company of his colleagues, the corporal should be gloating for humiliating a group of academics by showing them police power. You know what; the academics saw him as using koti power, which is abuse of police power.

What he ended up doing was to cause the Police Service loss of goodwill from a group of people who could in many ways have canvassed for positive public support for the police.

But even sadder was costing the poor girl involved in the accident the sympathy and goodwill that could have come from this group of people with sensitivities toward the unfortunate in society, especially children. The poor girl would have attracted a lot of support.

The Daily Guide pointed out the colonial roots of police brutality. Rather, remnants of that colonial repressive police practice were resurrected by Blaa Kutu who converted the service into a force. The P/NDC reinforced the brutality police culture. Now a footsoldiering mentality is taking hold.

By what methods, and at what point members of the service would have to be imbued with the need to be civil I cannot tell.

All I know is that it has to be done and done well. Failing to instill civility in the corporals would mean failing to project the positive image that would invite the cooperation of the public.

When that happens, Superintendent Kwesi Ofori or his successor managers of police image will forever struggle with little results to show. And if the police service is unable to perform because the public is not cooperating, it is the public which will suffer.

There must be a way out of the chicken and egg situation so that members of the public can sleep soundly because police work is easier with public support and also because member of the public are not victims of police abuse of power.

Tolerance levels would differ in various policing situations. For example, armed confrontation, with its far riskier stakes, will invite low level tolerance.

But a minor accident situation must attract far higher level of tolerance in user-friendly and not public unfriendly, policing. Between the two, you have the hit-and-run driver and the responsible retired public serviceman driver.    

By Kwasi Ansu-Kyeremeh