Traditional policing is bane to community policing – Prof. Attafuah
Professor Ken Agyemang-Attafuah, a private legal practitioner, on Wednesday identified traditional and adversarial methods adopted by some police personnel as the bane to community policing in Ghana.
He expressed worry that some personnel maintained that they needed to adopt adversarial methods to ensure security and safe-keeping, particularly during duty at Financial and Banking Institutions (FBIs).
Prof. Agyemang-Attafuah was speaking at the Fourth National Community Policing Stakeholders’ Conference organised by the Ghana Police Service for operators of FBIs in Accra.
It was on the theme: “The Role of Banking and Financial Institutions in Community Policing.”
Prof. Agyemang-Attafuah identified corruption in the form of gifts, favouritism, familiarisation and ‘pay offs’ as other forms of impediment towards effective community policing stressing that the exposure and susceptibility of police personnel within the business community were high.
“These are critical, given the close interface between the FBIs and the police personnel who work directly in close partnership in any successful community policing project.”
Prof. Agyemang-Attafuah called on management of FBIs to sponsor erection of street lights, planned footpaths and national media campaign to reduce the vulnerability of the institutions to criminality.
Mr Kofi Boakye, Assistant Commissioner of Police, said the Police had now adopted a paradigm shift from the traditional style of policing to a public-police partnership, adding that the new method was more friendly, interactive and community-centred.
He called for close collaboration with the citizenry to effectively combat crime.
Mr Kofi Lucas, a security expert and an executive member of the Planning Committee for Community Policing Unit (CPU) said the Unit aims at encouraging close relationship with civil society to give the Police an opportunity to understand and appreciate the security needs and concerns of communities.
CPU was established in 2002 to forge collaboration between the police and communities to fight crime, provide security and safety of the citizenry.
Mr Lucas said CPU’s approach to policing included combined sensitisation, outreach and anti-crime educational talks; formation of neighbourhood watch committees; use of community protection assistants under the National Youth Employment Programme; and the use of police bicycle patrols.
In a communiqué issued at the end of the conference, the participants pledged to support the CPU concept and called for the establishment of a Ministry of Police Affairs.
Source: GNA