Police CID to be overhauled

Page 20: Daily Graphic, May 23, 2009.
Story: Albert K Salia
THE Inspector-General of Police (IGP), Mr Paul Quaye, on Friday announced plans to overhaul the Criminal Investigations Department (CID) of the police to enable it to play its role as the heartbeat of policing.
As part of the measures, he has called for the reactivation of specialised units such as the Known Criminals Section, Convicts on Licence, Modus Operandi Section, Appeals and Cancellation Section and Gazette section.
“Vital institutional structures in the CID have, over the years, been distorted, some others have been relegated to the background, and yet others seriously watered down to regrettable levels of insignificance. Several vital functions, systems and structures which hitherto supported effective criminal investigations have been allowed to fizzle out and the few left only exist on paper,” he said.
At a meeting with officers and men of the CID headquarters in Accra, Mr Quaye said the Criminal Data Services Bureau, Crime Scene Management Team and the Serious Crime Registry needed to be revamped to facilitate and monitor investigations.
He said the absence and inefficiency of those very essential units had created a huge vacuum which rendered criminal investigations hollow, incomplete and woefully unsatisfactory.
He said a look at the 2008 annual report of the CID indicated that most officers and men were practising what was often-termed “arm-chair investigations”.
He expressed regret that personnel had neglected one of the key principles for successful investigations which demanded that an investigator should be interested in his or her case from the beginning to the end.
“The result is that more than 70 per cent of cases reported to us are often tagged as still being under investigations at the end of the year. By December 2007, 195,320 out of the 255,412 cases reported were still pending and this represented 76.47 per cent. A similar situation prevailed in 2008 as 183,126, representing 76.239,823 cases reported were pending investigations at the end of the year,” he noted.
Mr Quaye urged them to work hard to bring back the prestigious and admirable status that used to be associated with the title “detective”.
On the professional use of intelligence, he reminded the personnel that unjustifiable arrests, untested approaches of ‘trial and error’ and other draconian measures employed by some officers in combating crime were no longer acceptable in democratic dispensation.
He said although modern policing and crime fighting must be intelligence-led, the police had little to show in the field of crime intelligence.
He, therefore, called for the identification of personnel with the requisite skills to be offered appropriate training in the field of crime intelligence, stressing that “the careful cultivation and maintenance of well-collated and co-ordinated crime intelligence could help us achieve commendable operational results in our crime-fighting crusade”.
With regards to handling of exhibits, Mr Quaye expressed regret that the provisions spelt out in Police Service Instruction No. 207 on the proper handling of exhibits in police custody were blatantly ignored by investigators and exhibits store keepers.
That, he said, had resulted in the loss of valuable exhibits including cocaine a couple of years ago, which caused so much damage to the police.
“Let me caution that situations in which drug exhibits are carelessly dumped in store rooms is highly unprofessional since such practices provide unhealthy recipes for the theft of exhibits involved,” he said.
The IGP also expressed concern about the laxed and appalling security arrangements and the congestion and litter of vehicles at the CID headquarters.
Mr Quaye said there appeared to be no mechanism that regulated the movement of persons who entered the premises either for official business or private purposes.
“It should not surprise anybody if unchecked, confidence tricksters use this premises as their rendezvous to dupe their victims. Itinerant vendors and petty traders of all kinds of wares invade the yard on a daily basis and even enter individual offices with impunity to advertise their wares - with no one checking their access even to controlled areas,” he said.
On the littered vehicles, Mr Quaye directed that the leadership of the CID to clear the vehicles within a week.