Police have a history of wrongly killing civilians - Prof Tankebe
Police will continue to shoot civilians if officers are not held accountable
1 dead, 6 injured as mob attack Nkoranza Police headquarters – Ghana Police Service confirms
A Ghanaian criminologist at the University of Cambridge, Prof Justice Tankebe, has urged Ghanaians not
Read full articleto simply accept the narrative of the police regarding the killing of a suspected armed robber, Albert Donkor, in Nkoranza.
According to him, the narrative of the police cannot be accepted because the police have a history of shooting civilians who are perceived to be thieves, 3news.com reports.
“Do the Police have the legal rights sometimes to use deadly force? We will say, yes they do have that right. But what happens when they do that? I think what we have in Ghana is that anytime the Police have shot and killed civilians they suspected of being armed robbers we just accept the Police’s narrative that there was an intelligence-led action that resulted in the killing of armed robbers.
“But we cannot have a democracy in which we simply accept the police’s narrative, especially where we have a history of some killings proving to be actually illegal,” Prof Tankebe is quoted to have said.
The criminologist further stated that if proper measures are not put in place to hold officers accountable for police brutalities, they will continue to harm and kill civilians.
“When we have public order situations, and we send police officers there fully armed, we should expect nothing but what we so often see, which is the killing of protestors. As long as we lack the institutional arrangement to hold officers to account, to minimize the use of excessive force, I am afraid there will be many more of such situations,” he said.
The Ghana Police Service had stated that a suspect, Albert Donkor, died as a result of a gunshot wound he sustained during a police operation and not in the custody of the police as been asserted to the public.
In a statement issued on May 17, 2022, the police said that Albert Donkor, who is suspected to be part of a robbery gang, was shot by the police during a special operation and later died in the hospital from wounds.
However, persons in the community including the Member of Parliament for the area (Nkoranza South Constituency), Emmanuel Kwadwo Agyekum, have indicated that there was some foul play in the death of the Albert Donkor.
The late Albert Donkor
