Law Enforcement- The road to development.

The World Bank identifies corruption- the abuse of public office for private gain as “the single greatest obstacle to development,” an obstacle that “undermines development by distorting the rule of law and weakening the institutional framework on which development depends” World Bank 2003. In short the level of corruption in a society determines the effectiveness of the rule of law the main pivot of democracy.

Flt. Lt. J. J. Rawlings (retired), former AFRC chairman and his group rightfully identified this problem in 1979. However, what they failed to identify was picking the RIGHT PLAYERS of this socio-politico-economic vice. In an attempt to clean Ghana of all forms of corruption, they targeted market women, market structures, judges, fellow military officers, the wealthy, or basically the public. They left their eye off the ball- the Ghana Police.

The Police hold the key to corruption. Charity begins at home and as Jesus said, remove the log on your eye before you remove the perk on your neighbor’s eye. The Police Officer is an agent empowered to enforce the law. There are different forms of Police corruption but the only two mentioned here are bribery and extortion- the most prevalent, visible and frequent.

Bribery is where the Police Officer uses his/her discretion, directives or monopoly to accept money or other favors from someone whether solicited or unsolicited in return for the non-enforcement of the law. Extortion on the other hand is where the Police Officer demands favors from people they accuse of breaking the law for the sole purpose of collecting a favor.

These two forms of corruption are the main causes of injustice, insecurity and absolute disregard for the rule of law in Ghana. Most ‘defense attorneys’ of the Police corruption use these common defense: low pay, no logistics, low morale, corrupt public, superior directives, peer pressure etc. If one gives one of these excuses in the court, is it enough to set him free?

A friend of mine is a Police Officer in Maryland (USA). He issues about $20,000 worth of traffic tickets each month for the County government. Part of this money is used to pay for this officer’s salary, training, police cruiser, weapons, laptop, camera, fuel, radio, etc. In effect these tickets he writes come back to him. His paycheck is good and he has all the logistics to do his job effectively. In Ghana, the Police Officer pockets the monies he collects and turns to the government for higher pay and adequate logistics. This has become part of our ‘modern’ culture.

A greater part of all auto accidents in Ghana are the direct or indirect results of Police bribery. Whether or not the vehicle is overloaded, poor physical condition, operated by a driver under the influence, driven by an unlicensed driver, etc, a one Cedi bribe will pave the way for the unfortunate passengers to head towards their destiny instead of destination. Passengers who raise any objection are captioned -demons.

Why do we spend thousands of cedis or dollars to raise our fence wall to the moon? This is for the sake of security. The Police have failed us. It cost my friend about $10,000 for his cinderblock fence wall with electric barbwire. He also has burglarproof windows and doors and two dogs. If one estimates the cost of all these security measures in various homes in Accra, you will know the reason why we are underdeveloped. These security expenses could have been used to upgrade our roads, hospitals, schools and police stations just to mention these few but lack of trust in the Police force has resulted in the public taking steps on their own, the cost notwithstanding.

Many people argue that, everybody in the public sector is doing it, why shouldn’t the Police? My answer is: everybody is doing it because the Police are not doing their job as law enforcement officers. They are supposed to arrest judges, politicians, teachers, managers, prison guards and anybody who is committing any crime.

It always stated by most Ghanaians that our beloved country is getting better.

To some extent it is true considering where we came from. But, so long as Police corruption is being performed in broad daylight, armed robbers are tormenting neighborhood and there is no rule of law (lawlessness), I see every development project initiated today as just a quick fix. Borrowing monies, grants and gifts from countries abroad to construct road and buy vehicles for the Police is not development. Develop countries are wealthy due to effective law enforcement. We need a permanent fix. These bribery and extortion may involve small amounts of money; the aggregate socio-economic impact is substantial. The bribery that is going on may be greater than the proceed from the exportation of cocoa. More laws written by the Parliament imply more cocoa trees are being planted for the police to harvest for themselves. Why waste your time in enacting more laws if the laws in the books are not being enforced?

We should focus on the Police corruption and fight it together and Ghana will be a better place to live.

Paul Gyamfi Maryland, USA

Views expressed by the author(s) do not necessarily reflect those of GhanaHomePage.