Police Service to have air wing

The Ghana Police Service is to establish an air wing to manage aircraft that will be provided to the service by the government to enhance its operational activities.

The government has indicated its intention to provide three helicopters to the Ghana Police Service to enhance its services.

Although it is not clear when the aircraft will arrive in the country and where they will come from, police sources have hinted that the Police Administration will establish an air unit to man the aircraft.

At the 2018 end-of-year get-together of the Criminal Investigation Department (CID), popularly known as West African Social Service Association (WASSA) in Accra last Friday, the Chief of Staff at the Presidency, Mrs Akosua Frema Osei Opare, said the acquisition of the three aircraft was in line with the government's commitment to empower and retool the Ghana Police Service for it to carry out its mandate effectively and more efficiently.

The 2018 WASSA was on the theme: “Consolidating Ideas Against Vigilantism for National Safety.”
WASSA is an annual event for the personnel of the security services to socialise, take stock of the previous year and strategise.

Sophisticated crimes

Mrs Osei Opare stated that although technological advancement and increasing globalisation had facilitated international trade and business, criminals had leveraged those opportunities to advance their illegal activities making it easy for global crimes to become local crimes and vice versa.

“Criminals nowadays apply sophisticated, complex, dangerous and messy methods to commit crimes. The traditional approaches and methods of investigation will not sufficiently suffice in the fight against these crimes,” she said.

Detectives Academy

To enhance the human resource capacity of the CID, Mrs Frema Osei Opare said a modern national detective training academy with modern facilities would be established at Kenyasi Number One in the Bono Region.

“Crimes such as robbery, kidnapping, murder and most recently vigilantism, are threatening the peace and stability of this country. I urge you to deal with such crimes swiftly without fear or favour. Be professional, bold, fair and firm, irrespective of the ethnic, political or economic standing of the personalities involved in such crimes,” she urged.

After commending the personnel and officers of the CID for their hard work, the Chief of Staff urged them to act with despatch in their duty.

Case tracking

The Director General of the CID, Commissioner of Police Mrs Maame Yaa Tiwa Addo-Danquah, said for effective investigations, the department had developed a case tracking management system.

The system, which she described as an important tool, would in addition to facilitating criminal data collection help supervisors in the various units of the department to access dockets and cases in real time.

She entreated all investigators and their supervisors to input cases under investigations into the system, which, she said, was very simple to use and was developed by the Police Service ICT Directorate.

Reiterating the position of the Police Administration on vigilantism, Mrs Addo-Danquah said the police would maintain a zero tolerance policy against political vigilantism.

She appealed to the public to collaborate with the police to fight crime. “The criminal elements in the country live with us in our communities.

Some of us know of their activities but fail to give information to the police,” she said.

Awards

Some police personnel were honoured for their dedicated services.

Some journalists, including the Daily Graphic's Mary Mensah, Anita Nyarko of the Ghanaian Times, Linda Tenya of Daily Guide, Peter Adator of TV3 and Anas Seidu of CitiFM, were also honoured for their contributions to the Ghana Police Service’s efforts to fight crime.