Bribery In Police: Ghana Integrity Initiative Proposes Use of Body Cams And Swoops
- An anti-graft campaigner has proposed the use of a robust monitoring system to deter police officers from taking bribes
- Mary Awelana Addah of the Ghana Integrity Initiative has asked the police administration to roll out body cams as a standard practice
- Addah made the comments when she spoke to YEN.com.gh in an exclusive interview following a UN report that ranked officers of the Ghana police as the most bribe-takers
Ghana Integrity Initiative (GII), the local chapter of global anti-graft agency Transparency International, has called on the police administration to institute a robust monitoring system to root out rampant bribe-taking by officers.
Acting Executive Director of GII Mary Awelana Addah has said although corruption among the police, especially bribe-taking in traffic and at checkpoints, is now an open secret it must not be allowed to fester.
Addah was speaking to YEN.com.gh in an exclusive interview following a UN report that ranked officers of the Ghana police as the most bribe-takers among public officers.
Source: UGC
UN report confirms long-held perception about police
The report also found that officers of the Ghana Immigration Service and Ghana Revenue Authority follow the police in second and third places for corruption.
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The report by the UNODC also disclosed that half of the people in contact with police officers paid bribes an average of four times.
This is not the first time corruption among the police has featured prominently in a corruption perception survey.
In a 2022 Afrobarometer report, Ghanaians interviewed said they have had encounters involving the payment of bribes. Police are also seen more widely seen as corrupt than any other institution the survey asked about. Only a minority of citizens say they trust the police.
Police are mentioned often because they interact often with the public
On the back of the conversation that the latest UN report has stirred among the public, YEN.com.gh reached out to Mary Awelanah Addah.
She told YEN.com.gh that it is not strange that the police officers would top the bribing-taking public officials in Ghana.
"Police officers, by their work interact with members of the public a lot so the unethical ones among them would usually use intimidation tactics to extort money from the vulnerable, the people who lack knowledge about their rights," she said.
Mary Awelana Addah stated that because many members of the public are not knowledgeable about the law, it is also easy for unethical police officers to take advantage of them.
She also said from the UN report, it is easy to link the institutions ranked at the top of bribe-takers and how often they interact with the public, explaining that a lack of robust monitoring and sanctions regime has intensified the culture of corruption.
Time for a more robust monitoring mechanism
She has asked the police administration, the GRA and the Immigration Service to institute a more robust monitoring system that will punish officers.
"We must first uproot the culture of bribe-taking and other forms of corruption that is so deep in our public institutions, so the sanctions for those who are caught must be severe to serve as deterrent," she told YEN.com.gh.
She said in the past, unannounced swoops at checkpoints and the use of secret recordings were used to catch corrupt officers but they seem to have been discontinued. The anti-graft campaigner wants the police to bring them back.
"We also need body cams on all our officers as a standard practice. Body cams will record everything a police officer would do. We need to discourage corruption among the police.
"We must first correct the current culture of corruption and put in place a new culture. The police administration must be firm and correct this negative problem it faces, but so must the other public institutions cited int he report," she said.
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Source: YEN.com.gh
