The police play a very vital role in ensuring peace in a country, a fact which makes them very indispensable.
It is in view of this that the government ought to provide more to the police for them to carry out their constitutional duty of safeguarding law and order.
The Daily Graphic finds it gratifying that over the past few years the government has provided more vehicles, better remuneration, equipment and uniforms to the police, which has helped to make them more visible in their efforts to fight crime.
It is, however, our view that there still remains a lot to be done to make the Ghana Police Service a very effective and efficient one.
While commending the government for facilitating more visibility of the police on our roads and in the communities, the Daily Graphic believes they require more professional training in modern policing techniques to be at par with their counterparts in the developed world.
The many incidents of the police assaulting suspects and offending members of the public and shooting suspected criminals even before verifying their status are all issues of worry to the average Ghanaian.
While we agree that the police must uphold law and order, we wish to remind them they are friends of the public and need to conduct themselves as such without compromising their conduct and ethics.
The Daily Graphic, indeed, finds it very heart-warming President Mahama’s statement at the 45th Graduation of Cadet Officers of the Ghana Police Service held in Accra yesterday that the government would ensure the Ghana Police Service is well equipped to improve its service delivery and provide strategic policing.
We believe that our police need to be better equipped with modern weapons to match the sophistication of perpetrators of modern crime and also be able to adequately protect themselves while performing their duties.
The Daily Graphic is also of the view that the establishment of a Police Staff and Command College at Winneba to give a global perspective to peace-building, as hinted by President Mahama, would be very ideal to complement the effort of the already existing police training facilities in the country.
Although the Ghana Police Service has already made waves in international peacekeeping duties, we believe a command and staff college would make it perform even better.
The Daily Graphic asks for better accoutrements for the police, as well as an improvement in the police-civilian ratio so that every citizen would be well catered for in our various communities.
We think that there should be a new thinking about crime combat with the public playing a very critical role.
It is a fact that the criminals live within the communities as some of them are our neighbours.
The country will be a safe place to live in if the people assist the police to smoke out the criminal gangs from their hideouts.
It is refreshing the police acknowledge that the public is an ally in crime combat, but, unfortunately, sometimes the police abuse the confidentiality between them and members of the public by blowing the top of those who give them information.
The Daily Graphic calls on the police to win the trust of members of the public as allies in crime combat by keeping a lid on information on criminal activities given by the people.
