The Ghana Police Service has urged Ghanaians to cease providing money to its personnel, and then turned around and labelled the whole law enforcement department as corrupt.
DCOP Kojo Antwi Tabi, the Ghana Police Service’s Deputy Director-General in charge of the Private Services Organization, told JoyNews that the public’s impression of the police in Ghana is just as corrupt as the reality.
Offenders who are detained by the police are the first to offer bribes to the arresting officers because they don’t want to be subjugated to the rules of the country, he said.
“It is also the responsibility of the general people to take responsibility for the allegations they are making. They are also equally at fault, since the Police cannot take your money if you don’t give it to them. If you break the law and the police want to bring a case against you, you must allow yourself to go through the proper channels.
“Even if you go to court, the offence may not result in a substantial fine in certain cases. However, if you give an unethical police officer the opportunity to demand any amount of money because you are unable to enable yourself to go to court, you are putting yourself at risk “Myjoyonline.com quotes DCOP Kojo Antwi Tabi as saying.
“Culpable policemen are dealt with harshly to dissuade others from engaging in this kind of behavior,” said the head of the police department.
There has been a lot of communication between us and them, and we’ve also been teaching them and disciplining those officers who have been proven to have extorted money or done anything illegally.
Responding to findings from the Ghana Statistical Service, the Center for Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ), and the Center for Democratic Development (CDD), DCOP Kojo Antwi Tabi was quoted as saying this.
Ghana’s police force was deemed the most corrupt by the two studies.
More than two-thirds of Ghanaians believe that the Ghana Police Service is the most corrupt organization in the country, according to the results of a recent Afrobarometer poll conducted by the Ghana Center for Democratic Development (CDD).
Under Ghanaian law, both the donor and the recipient of bribes are culpable.