More training for cops

Page 20/45: Daily Graphic, June 4, 2009.
Story: Albert K. Salia
THE Inspector-General of Police (IGP), Mr Paul Quaye, yesterday announced plans for the continuous training of personnel of the Ghana Police Service.
Currently, there is no continuous training programme in place to sharpen the skills of personnel after they have passed out of the National Police Training Schools or the Police Staff College.
Key on the agenda of a meeting of the Headquarters Management and Advisory Board (HEMAB) meeting on June 3, 2009, is the drawing up of strategies and establishment of structures for the continuous training programme.
Speaking at the opening of Cadet Course 42 for 125 personnel at the Police College in Accra yesterday, Mr Quaye said the training and retraining of personnel in any organisation was important and central to its success and development since the process equipped individuals with the requisite knowledge base and technical capacity-building skills to enable them play their roles effectively.
He said it was against that background that the Police Administration found it imperative to make training and retraining one of the priorities to enhance the professionalism of the personnel.
He said the exigencies of constitutional democracy also underscored the need to constantly keep personnel well-informed about the approaches and techniques of modern policing in accordance with the appropriate principles of democratic policing.
Mr Quaye reminded the personnel that the positive use of modern technology was sometimes misapplied for purposes which were harmful to society.
He said the Police could not remain static in their various approaches to preventing and solving crime, which was aimed at ensuring safer communities and neighbourhoods.
Mr Quaye said the police could only face the challenges of the times “through regular training in contemporary policing methods to help us update our knowledge and keep abreast with current developments”.
He said the Police Administration had also decided that cadet officers pay GH¢5 of their daily feeding cost as part of measures to reduce the cost the Police incurred in running the programme and also help to run regular cadet officers courses for the increasing number of qualified personnel.
The Commandant of the college, Osabarima Oware Asare Pinkro III, in a welcoming address, noted that police personnel could not continue to rely on what they were taught years back.
“We should not create a false impression that we can do better without retraining initiatives and programmes. We should learn new things. The complex issues and debates in the field of crime control and the new global politics of safety and security are with us. We cannot run away from these bare facts,” he noted.
Osabarima Pinkro urged police personnel to move beyond the narrow and technical boundaries of traditional policing which had always been reactive and not proactive.