From the in-tray of 2013
Though 2013 is gone, I cannot imagine when we, as a nation, can finish dealing with the items in the in-tray of that year.
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It is, therefore, difficult deciding which items to start with in this piece – one year of the Mahama administration, ‘fortified’ Fortiz and the Merchant Bank romance, GYEEDA, the GH¢1.5m projected re-registration of government vehicles, the promised building of 200 new senior high schools, increased electricity and water tariffs, the media development fund, and ‘almighty’ corruption, and many more.
We would deal with all these issues as we progress this year. Meanwhile one issue popped up while I was deciding on which of the issues to tackle this week. It is the demolition exercise which went on at Adenta in Accra on Monday, resulting in the shooting (to death) of a young man, Adjei Akpor, 22, by the police.
My concern for the Adenta shooting incident stems from two points – the action of the police officers, and the performance of the media.
Immediately after the young man was shot and killed by the police, the Greater Accra Regional Police Commander, Deputy Commissioner of Police (DCOP) Christian Tettey Yohonu, Superintendent Theodore Hlormenu, Accra Regional Commander of the Special Weapon and TacticTraining Alpha Operations, and the Public Relations Officer, Deputy Superintendent Freeman Tettey, all strongly justified the killing of Adjei Akpor, describing him as a land guard who was wielding a cutlass and was about to butcher a policeman.
Arrogance
I am very concerned about the arrogance of the senior police personnel who spoke to the media after a policeman had shot and killed a human being. Many questions arose following the killing and the subsequent claims by the Police Service.
Mr Yohonu is a senior police officer; as a DCOP there is no doubt about his seniority in the Police Service. This is why I was shocked by the alacrity with which he went into the justification of the killing of Adjei Akpor. As a senior police officer, one expected him to have shown some professionalism by not quickly jumping to justify the killing of a Ghanaian and labelling the deceased as a land guard, but to undertake proper investigation before defending the police action.
In Ghana, the Police Service has, over the years, killed innocent people and got away with it, making personnel of the service seem to be above the law. In other democracies, the Police Service cannot investigate itself, try itself and pass judgement on itself, yet that is the case with the Ghana Police Service.
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There have been many police killings of innocent people where no action had been taken and nobody held responsible for those killings, simply because top officers of the Police Administration under whose jurisdiction such killings took place would quickly jump to the defence of their men and women who committed the murders.
Dear Mr Yohonu, considering the type of police accoutrement and the number of police personnel sent to Adenta for the exercise which we saw on television, was it not a failure on your part as Deputy Commissioner of Police, and that of your service that such a strong team could not disarm a 22-year-old man who was alleged to be wielding a cutlass?
It appears to me, following previous trigger-happy actions of some police officers, that shoot-to-kill is perhaps the only or best training given to the personnel of the Ghana Police Service.
Elsewhere, such ‘by-heart’ killings by the police would have been investigated by an independent state body, and culprits dealt with according to law. However, in Ghana, the Police Service investigates itself whenever its officers had committed heinous crimes, thus never finding anybody culpable.
In the United Kingdom, the Independent Police Complaints Commission would never allow police atrocities against the people to go unnoticed. It is, therefore, long overdue for Ghana to set up an independent police complaints commission which will deal with all complaints against the police. Definitely, the Ghana Police Service cannot be above the laws of Ghana.
Media professionalism
My other concern over the Adenta killing is how some of the media institutions did not exhibit professionalism in their reportage. Many of the journalists who reported on the incident failed to apply the simple journalistic principles of fairness and objectivity, which required that as much as possible both sides of a story must be reported.
Many of the radio stations which carried reports on the demolition and killing of Adjei Akpor described him as a land guard, simply because the police officers there had told them so.
Daily Guide’s banner headline on Tuesday, January 7, 2014, read: “Adenta land guard shot dead.” The accompanied story starts like: “A suspected land guard was killed on the spot……while three others were arrested for opening fire on the police….at Adenta in Accra.
….The deceased, identified as Adjei Akpor aka Brother, was a member of a 25-member land guard team……”
Did the reporter personally see the ‘land guards’ opening fire on the police or that is what the police told her? Did she count the land guards thus resulting in her emphatic reportage that the deceased was a member of a 25-member land guard team?
From the reporter’s own story (paragraph 6), she never saw any action of the land guards but rather was told by Superintendent Hlormenu.
The Daily Graphic story of the same day had a brilliant intro (the first paragraph) but lost the plot immediately after that. The reporters described the deceased as a suspected member of a group of land guards who had attempted to attack two of the policemen with a machete,” Suspected by whom, the reporters? The paragraph three of the story is even worse: “Perceiving danger, one of the policemen fired a warning shot, which hit the right eye of Akpor, killing him instantly.”
The above paragraph shows that the Daily Graphic Reporters were present and witnessed what happened which they reported, yet the second paragraph after that indicated that DCOP Yohonu was the one who briefed them.
For the Ghanaian Times their intro was perfect: “A team of policemen from the Accra Regional Police Command yesterday shot and killed a young man among a group protesting against a demolition exercise….(Tuesday, January 7 edition).
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“The police described him and other young men protesting the exercise as ‘land guards.’” The reporter also attributed correctly everything said about the deceased and the alleged gang to the police.
It is important for the media to be more circumspect about what police officers tell them at crime scenes, especially when police personnel are clearly seen to have failed a professional test. The media must not allow themselves to be used by the police to cover their shortcomings and also use their reportage as an alibi.
• Dr Frankie Asare-Donkoh is a journalist and political scientist. He is the Head of the Department of Media and Communication Studies, Pentecost University College, Accra.
(fasado@hotmail.com)