Adib Saani, a Security Expert has said the training regime for the police in Ghana needs reassessment following the conduct of some police officers in the recent Arise Ghana ‘Krom Ay3 Shi’ demonstration in Accra.
He says “we have varied reasons for violence breaching out at different protests but we have some similar cross-cutting issues that also need to be addressed and one of them is the training regime for the police. Some of them have a terminator mentality and they feel that the only way to break a protest is the use of brute force.”
Speaking on the Day Break Upper East Show on A1 Radio, Mr Saani noted that most police officers don’t know that there is a window of opportunity for de-escalation and so when they get to the protest site is ‘buga buga’.
“Another thing is accountability. When things happened we talked about it and nobody is held to account. We wait until it happens again; but once we start holding people to account whether you are a law enforcement officer, whether you are a protestor that will serve as a big deterrent to others who feel that they can hide under the cover of a protest to do criminal stuff,” the Security Expert added.
He stated that the police have stages of intervention depending on the situational risk assessment that is done. A proportional force is then applied to counter that risk but unfortunately, some officers get there and the only thing they know how to do is to start firing.
Source: A1radioonline.com|101.1MHz|Osuman Kaapore Tahiru|Ghana
