Adam Bonaa criticises a KNUST professor for making ‘unscientific’ comments concerning the perception of the police under Dampare
According to Dr. Amakye Boateng, a political science lecturer at Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, accusations that the Ghana Police Service’s reputation is deteriorating under its current leadership are unfounded. Security expert Dr. Adam Bonaa has refuted these claims.
Dr. Bonaa asserts that Dr. Amakye’s assertions, which she made in response to a widely shared video showing some police officers pleading with an illegal mining gang on their knees, are not supported by any academic studies.
“There is no basis for that, in my opinion; I don’t think he has any. Using a few seconds to make such a claim is challenging. His title suggests that he is a researcher, yet it is oversimplified to claim that an organization’s reputation is suffering because there have been certain instances of officers who may have engaged in misconduct or may have faced criticism. He claims it without any support from science, which I don’t want to accept. In an interview, Dr. Bonaa said, “He is a PhD holder, and I think he should know better.
Dr. Amakye stated that “the problem the present IGP has been facing is still going high, and the image of the police is getting out of hand” in an interview with Kumasi-based Angel FM. The perception is not favourable.
Contrarily, Dr. Bonaa claimed that under Dr. George Akuffo Dampare, the Ghana Police Service has made considerable strides towards reducing crime and upholding law and order.
Every police organisation in the globe is evaluated based on the severity of the crimes. Their primary responsibility is to preserve people’s lives and property in order to maintain peace.
“And so, as far as I’m concerned, I’ll be evaluating every police organisation in the world, including ours, based on whether crime rates are rising or falling. And I would want to add that I am confident that we called for increased police visibility, increased highway patrols, the capture of hardened offenders, and a crackdown on highway jackers, all of which I believe have considerably occurred over the past 16 or so months, according to Dr Bonaa.
Notwithstanding the fact that there is still more work to be done in that area, he emphasised that security, law, and order have generally improved under the current police administration.
On April 2, 2023, the Ghana Police Service announced the arrest of four people who it said had attacked police personnel with the Axim Police Command.
The police declaration came in response to news stories about a viral video depicting an altercation between a group of suspected illegal miners and a squad of police officers in a forest.
A police officer was seen in the aforementioned video pleading with the gang’s leader, who was accusing them of trying to “take him away” after the officer “gave them money,” to stop.
The police named Kwame Ato Asare Ani as the gang’s leader in their statement, but he is still at large.
Kwame Asare, however, claimed to be a police informant who collects money from illegal miners in the Axim region on behalf of the Axim Police Command when communicating to several media outlets from his hiding place.
He claimed that the reason the police were chasing him was because he pocketed approximately GH100,000.00 that he took rather than giving it to the police since he felt the police had deceived him in past transactions.
The Police Professional Standards Bureau has been notified of Kwame Ani’s claims of extortion, the Ghana Police Service stated in a statement on April 2. (PPBS).