• Prof Aning of KAIPTC says intelligence is almost absent in the Ghana Police Service
• He cited two examples of how police police dealt with a purported CCTV footage of Jamestown bullion van attack and recent Ejura riots
• Aning has charged the new IGP to restructure the service and work to boost confidence in personnel and the general public
Prof Kwesi Aning of the Kofi Annan International Peacekeeping Training Center, KAIPTC, has asserted that intelligence in the Ghana Police Service is almost non-existent.
He adds that most analysis of security issues from the police were wrong and their subsequent conclusions, bogus.
GhanaWeb monitored comments he made whiles speaking on Metro TV’s Good Evening Ghana program (the July 22 edition) which was centered on the tasks that lay ahead for new Inspector General of Police, COP George Akuffo Dampare.
“Police intelligence is almost non-existent, it is weak, it is ineffective, the analysis are wrong and most of the conclusions utterly bogus,” he told host Paul Adom-Otchere.
He cited two recent instances to buttress his point, one being the issue of a CCTV footage of a footage from the Jamestown bullion van robbery that led to the death of a police escort and another woman.
Prof Aning submitted: “One relates to the murder of the police officer who was in the bullion van and the police administration coming out in public to tell the world that somebody had his own private CCTV cameras but he is refusing to handover the film to the police.
“What are the rules around having CCTV cameras and what does he owe the police? Now, by outing this individual for having possibly filmed the crime, the police had actually put this guy and his family and his business in danger.
“We cannot have that kind of poor police intelligence and analysis,” he stressed.
About the CCTV footage
In June 2021, Interior Minister Mr Ambrose Dery had cause to appeal to a man whose CCTV cameras reportedly captured the robbery attacks on the bullion van to release the video to the Police to assist in arresting the criminals.
Mr Dery told TV3’s Dzifa Bampoh in an exclusive interview that the Police had informed him about the unwillingness of the man to release the CCTV video to help arrest the robbers.
“I want to emphasize that I told the Police each death is equally important. It mustn’t be a police, it mustn’t be a prominent politician, each death is equally important.
“This matter should be dealt with quickly as possible. It happened in the daytime but they raise an issue that I think I want to use this forum to appeal to. They say there is person who owns a CCTV in the vicinity.
“The Police are asking that they be given the recording of the CCTV but there was resistance from the owner. I want to use this medium to appeal to him to cooperate and to appeal to all those persons who were in the vicinity to assist the Police on whatever description or whatever information that they have to enable us track them.”
How Ejura exposed non-existent police intel
The second instance he cited was how the police handled the period before, during and after the deadly riots in Ejura which were triggered by the death of an activist, Ibrahim Mohammed, popularly referred to as Macho Kaaka.
“Ejura epitomizes the lack of sensitivity and analytical skill of police intelligence but also the national intelligence bureau officers who were on the ground.
“And herein comes the issue about the applicable usefulness, the empirical usefulness of a national security strategy document in which those who need to implement it themselves do not know about the existence of the document and the inherent norms and values inside that document,” he added.
