DISCIPLINE SECURITY AGENCIES

The issue of discipline is what every society wants to see for effective development. Today I bring to my cherished readers an editorial from Daily Graphic/Ghana on Discipline.

Discipline is the hallmark of any security agency.  Men and women who work for these organizations must show by example that they are disciplined. It is generally believed that in the security agencies, the personnel have no right to question any directive but just obey them and later ask for explanations. Laws, regulations and policies are meant to regulate society, so that it does not degenerate into a state of nature. In spite of the legal framework, there are various security breaches for which the security agencies, especially the police, are called upon regularly to restore order. The Ghana Police Service has, over the last few years, deployed personnel and logistics to vantage points in Accra and other cities, as well as on the highways, to fight crime and give space to law -abiding citizens to go about their endeavours. We have thousands of security personnel, majority of whom are very disciplined and law abiding.
Unfortunately, some of them are dragging the name of the agencies in the mud. The worst spectacle is the open extortion of money from motorists by policemen and women who are deployed on the roads to ensure that motorists abide by traffic regulations. The Inspector-General of Police has personally arrested certain policemen for extorting money from motorists, but even with that intervention from the top, some policemen cannot make a departure from these disgraceful acts. The Daily Graphic is not surprised that the Director-General of Police (Technical), Commissioner of Police (COP) Mr Frank Adu-Poku, has raised concern over the growing indiscipline among personnel of the service. He said unlike in the past when discipline was the hallmark of the personnel, the situation today was appalling. The Daily Graphic thinks the time has come for the Police Administration to clean the service of the bad lots in order to restore the good image of the service. The open demand for or extortion of money from motorists gives a very bad image of the Police Service as an institution whose personnel visit fraud on the citizenry. Majority of the personnel are doing quite well in maintaining law and order, but just as it is said that one bad nut can destroy the reputation of society, the few bad policemen and women give the impression that the police are very corrupt. The global corruption index cites the police as one of the most corrupt institutions, but all the same, the police are playing a critical role in the sustenance of peace and democracy in the country. We should, therefore, weed out the corrupt elements within the service to allow the patriotic ones to lead the crusade to eliminate all criminal gangs in our society.