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| Police, military in peace talks after nasty brutalities |
6/7/2010 |
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Police, military in peace talks after nasty brutalities
The leadership of the police service and the armed forces have engaged in peace talks to bring sanity into the security agencies, and to also diffuse tension among the two institutions.
This was necessitated by last week’s military attacks on police personnel in Kumasi. Some soldiers from the Fourth Garrison went on rampage, brutalising more than a dozen policemen at various duty posts in the Kumasi metropolis, which resulted in severe injuries.
DCOP Patrick Timbilla, Ashanti Regional Police Commander, has underscored the need for the two institutions to cooperate in all their activities to avoid the needless tension and attacks.
He said the authorities from both sides have since the unfortunate incidents been in talks to “nip what happened in the bud”, and hope it “will bear fruits”, assuring residents that there is “no cause for alarm”.
Mr Timbilla however stressed that the police would conduct “thorough investigations” into the case to unravel what triggered the attacks and those involved so that necessary actions would be taken against those found culpable.
He also advised military personnel not to engage in a brawl with the police under the guise of being soldiers because “the law is no respecter of anyone”.
The Ashanti Regional Minister, Mr Kofi Opoku Manu, in an interview with Joy News'' Evans Mensah, expressed confident in the peace talks, saying it will “restore the tainted image of the security”.
Mr Manu who is also the chairman of the Regional Security Council mentioned traffic jam as one of the negative impacts of the ‘awful’ events, after the police personnel deserted their posts in protest of the attacks.
“Immediately, what we needed to do was to ensure that there was sanity because we needed people to go back to work. If you have tension and you only went to multiply the tension it will not augur well for us to resolve the tension… so the fact that he [GOC, the Northern Command, Brig.-Gen. Chris Ocran] did not inflict sanction immediately didn’t mean they were going to go away free.”
A security expert with the Kofi Annan Peacekeeping Training Centre, Dr. Kwesi Anin, attributed the incidents to a “crisis of leadership in quite a number of our security institutions”.
“I think it will be naïve and extremely dangerous to overlook that [leadership crisis],” he cautioned.
A human rights activist, Nana Oye Lithur, said the National Security Council must take action on the rampant reports of military brutalities in the country.
Story by Isaac Essel/Myjoyonline.com/Ghana
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