Don’t lynch suspects — Police PRO
The Brong Ahafo Regional Police Public Relations Officer (PRO), Assistant Superintendent of Police (ASP) Christopher Tawiah, has appealed to the general public to desist from lynching suspected criminals or thieves when captured.
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He said, “the disadvantage of lynching such suspects is that, you have automatically killed a case that could lead to the arrest of other suspects”.
ASP Tawiah made the appeal in an interview with The Mirror about the resort to lynching suspects in the Brong Ahafo Region.
He said, “lynching of persons suspected to have committed some form of crime is prohibited by the 1992 Constitution of the Republic of Ghana”, adding that “you can wrongly kill an innocent person in that process”.
According to ASP Tawiah, although civilians had the right to arrest individuals they suspected to have committed some form of crime; they should, however, not subject such individuals to beatings but rather hand them over to the police.
He explained that most of the time, when civilians arrested someone and later the police took the matter up, such people failed to assist the police with information to enable them to prosecute such suspects.
“Because the public often fail to assist us, sometimes some of these suspects are set free and when they see them, they think the police are not working hence their decision to lynch people when they catch them in the act”, he said.
ASP Tawiah said when someone was seen in the act of lynching a person they suspected to have committed a crime, that person would be arrested and prosecuted to serve as deterrent to others.
