The public must be blamed for paying bribes, corrupting us – Police chief explains

Deputy Commissioner of Police, DCOP Kojo Antwi Tabi, has berated the public for complicity in actions and inactions that lead to corrupting police officers.

The Deputy Director-General of the Ghana Police Service in charge of the Private Services Organisation, says if members of the public opt to stop offering bribes and or accepting to pay the same, there would not

Read full articlebe instances of Policemen receiving the same.

“The members of the public too must be blamed for the accusations that they are making, they are also equally guilty because if you don’t give the police money, he cannot take it from your pocket,” he said in an interview with Accra-based Joy News.

He tasked the population to always insist on the due process being followed whenever they fall foul of the law. Refusing so to do, he noted, led to the payment of bribes when in fact the infractions may not be as grave as perceived if people opt to go to court for example.

He added that offering bribes or accepting to pay allows for recalcitrant officers to engage in actions that deepen the corruption perception tag on the Police.

“… when you tempt the police with money when you don’t want to go to court, you are giving an unscrupulous policeman (the) chance to demand any amount of money because you are not willing to allow yourself to go to court.”

He said the Police administration continued to talk to and train officers adding that offending policemen, extorters and corrupt ones are dismissed and or in some cases prosecuted.

He admonished the public to report bad nuts within the service because, with available evidence, the right punishment is meted out adding that without such reports, “it becomes difficult for senior officers to take action.”

The police have topped two recent corruption perception surveys. The first is a survey by the Ghana Statistical Service, Commission for Human Rights and Administrative Justice, CHRAJ and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).  According to the research, more than 17.4 million bribes were paid in 2021.

Per its findings, the Ghana Police Service, Ghana Immigration Service and Ghana Revenue Authority personnel topped the list of officials who take bribes with a percentage point of 53.2%. 37.4% and 33.6% respectively.

Earlier this week, the Police, Presidency and Parliament ranked the most corrupt public institutions according to an Afrobarometer study that was conducted by the policy think tank, the Ghana Centre for Democratic Development (CDD-Ghana).

The question posed to respondents was: "how many of the following people do you think are involved in corruption, or haven't you heard enough about them to say?"

65% of the respondents answered that "most/all" police officers were corrupt. Whiles 31% answered that only some police are corrupt.

With respect to the presidency and Parliament, 55% and 54% respectively stated that they were mostly corrupt, while 40% and 42% respectively said persons in the two institutions were partly corrupt.

The Police administration has formally responded to the first survey rejecting the findings on the basis of procedural and analytical challenges that it identified after studying the report findings.

In a five-page letter titled ‘Police Administration’s Response to your Corruption in Ghana Research Report,’ addressed to the three institutions concerned; Inspector-General of Police, George Akuffo Dampare punched holes in the survey.

IGP Dampare said the Police Service upon a thorough analysis of the report found that “the research and its findings are heavily challenged and corrupted from both the academic and practice point of view.”

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