Ghana Police launches e-crime project
The Criminal Investigations Department (CID) of the Ghana Police Service has launched the e-Crime Project to build the capacity of detectives in cyber crime investigation and intelligence gathering.
The aim of the e-Crime Project is to develop a national investigative response to cyber crimes and other electronics-based criminal activities in Ghana and the West African sub-region.
Launching the project in Accra Tuesday, the Director General of the CID, Commissioner of Police (COP), Mr Prosper Agblor, said the project was a collaboration between the CID and the e-Crime Bureau Inc, a cyber-security and investigations firm based in Ghana, and it was to help the police to keep pace with the increasing sophistication in the commission of crimes.
He said the project would focus on five thematic areas, namely the training of detectives in the area of digital forensics, internet investigation and cyber intelligence gathering and developing a mechanism for effective cyberspace reporting and setting up of a cyberspace laboratory.
He said crime was increasingly becoming sophisticated with the advent of modern technology, especially in the telecommunications sector, where criminals, in the comfort of their homes, can now commit all kinds of crime via the internet and other communications devices.
He said it was, therefore, very important that as law enforcement officers, they constantly upgraded their knowledge and skills to enable them to fight modern trends in crime successfully, adding that they needed to embrace new and current methods in investigations and acquire adequate knowledge in the application of technology to their work.
COP Agblor indicated that the need for professional capacity building in line with contemporary policing was extremely crucial for the economic growth and survival of every state and it was in the light of this that the police administration embodied training and retraining in its five-year Strategic National Policing Plan.
He said the 1992 Constitution mandated the police service to fulfil this onerous assignment and this called for the training and equipping of a vibrant and well-groomed professional human resource, capable of meeting the challenges posed by modernisation and increasing information and communication technology in the 21st Century.
“As police officers, we owe our society a duty not only to protect life and property but also to prevent and reduce crime to the barest minimum and this will lead to the creation of the enabling environment that will stimulate the growth of businesses, industries and the attraction of foreign investments, all culminating in the socio-economic development of our dear nation,” he said.
According to him, contemporary democratic policing has become intelligence-led where information or data was analysed or interpreted and used in fighting crime.
On her part, the Director in Charge of CID Training, Chief Superintendent Maame Yaa Tiwaa Addo-Danquah, said the aim of the exercise was to select the best candidates to be trained in investigation skills and knowledge to augment the strength of the CID.
She said just recently, during his tour of the Northern Region, the Inspector General of Police expressed worry about the inability of the CID to resolve numerous cases of crime to their logical conclusion and also most of the cases were left pending at the investigations level by the close of the year.
According to her, it was very disheartening to find accused persons who should have been convicted left off the hook with some of them coming back into society to perpetrate more crimes.
Chief Supt Tiwaa said to this end, the CID administration had spared no effort to ensure that the project was designed and tailored to equip the participants with the requisite knowledge and skills to make them more efficient in their day-to-day duties in the prevention, detection and investigation of crimes.
Source: Daily Graphic