The Police Turned Robbers And How They Escaped, Looking At It In My Microscopic Lens Of Conflict Of Interests

Conflicts of interest is an interesting topic to discuss. It's a broad concept to deal with so I will chip some aspects of it. We have all had issues of conflicts of interest as professionals or workers before but our abilities to deal with them successfully set us aside as individuals from all classes of professionals. We will continue to have them as long as we remain professionals or workers and that does not exclude the police. We are also humans working in human society so it's inevitable.

Michael McDonald in his article ethics and conflict of interest defined the subject matter as "a situation in which a person such as a public official, an employee, a professional has a private or personal interest sufficient enough to appear to influence the objective exercise of his official duties". He identified three elements of conflicts of interest in his definition; 1. Private or personal interest 2. Official or professional duties and 3. Interest interfering professional responsibilities or official duties. In his article McDonald admitted that there is nothing wrong to pursue personal or private interests but there is a problem when the interest collides with official or professional duties and the police are often found wanting here if not always.

Canadian political scientists Ken Kernaghan and John Langford in their book, The Responsible Public Servant identified 7 categories of conflicts of interest which public servants come into conflict with: 1. Self dealing 2. Accepting benefits 3. Influence peddling 4. Using your employer's property for self advantage 5. Using confidential information 6. Outside employment or moonlighting and 7. Post-employment. Kindly go through the list and find out which one you are guilty of. Next time we will discuss them into details.

Handling cases involving fellow police officers is a difficult one irrespective of crime he or she has committed or whatever he or she has done. In the army, it is the military police which is responsible for some of these issues but in the police, it seems different though Police Intelligence and Professional Standards (PIPS) seems to exist to function in the police as the military police does in the army. Even though we are all presumed to be police officers with investigations skills, I think there is the need for police within the police with decentralized structures and extra sharpened professional faculties to deal with some of these special cases for the sake of conflicts of interest. In often times, we handle these cases like all other criminal cases thereby putting the police officer handling the case into serious dilemma. We should also put it into consideration that this time round, we are handling cases of people who are equally trained like us compared to the civilian population which we always presumed to be untrained with lower levels of risk.

During these times, our sense of judgement becomes so clouded because we still see the offended police officer in the "eye" of our minds still wearing the police uniform thus sparking a lot of conflicts of interests in which in most cases send us out of job together with our colleague who has involved him or herself in controversies. Many police officers have not been successful dealing with these kinds of these cases. They often become victims of situation after handling these cases.

As a young police officer who investigates, I have investigated quite a number of police officers within these my few years in the police. Once I was investigating a fellow police officer who was involved in an accident. My late Chief Inspector Joseph Danso being an experienced police officer with over 30 years experience in investigations after studying my approach towards case, told me a story.

The late Chief Inspector told me that he was once in a station where a police inspector who was then the station officer one day took a locally manufactured gun and followed a certain man he was litigating issues of land with and killed him in the bush. Unfortunately for the Inspector, a third eye saw him committing that heinous crime and came and quickly reported for the Inspector to be arrested.

He was put before court and remanded into police custody. As he was in police custody, he was given all the needed respect and assistance since he was once a police officer. In the police, it is always said that once a police, always a police so our interests conflict when we are made to investigate a fellow officer. During these times, you the police officer who seems to do the right thing will be castigated by your fellow police officers and be tagged as the wicked one.

At a point in time, the police officers were allowing the Inspector on remand to sit at " counter back". As time goes on, he graduated from "counter back" to be sitting in front of the charge office and sooner than later, the Inspector on remand was allowed to roam in the barracks until in the evenings before he was made to sleep in cells. This went on for a while. One day the Inspector on remand said he is going to urinate at the back of the charge office and come. That was the last time he was seen.

He escaped. As the police were according him the favour based on the fact that he was once a police officer, he was also thinking how to escape to gain his freedom without putting those favouring him and their jobs into consideratIon. All the police officers who were on duty at the time were dismissed including the station officer who replaced the remanded Inspector as the station officer. They were out of job within a twinkle of an eye.

I thought my late Chief Inspector was joking until my fellow police officer whom I thought I was helping went and hired a lawyer to defend him at court. It is his right though but I knew he would be convicted if the case goes to court. I kept on advising him up to a point where he turned against me and started framing me up. Even that I was still joking around because I didn't want my brother a police officer to be convicted so the case was striked out for want of prosecution since I failed to go to court to testify.

My woes begun immediately the case was striked out. The car owner petitioned the IGP through my Regional Commander. Disciplinary action was looming so I quickly prepared arrest summons and went to served my colleague to appear before the court again. This time I warned him sternly that I would do my work as a professional and as expected. When I got there, he was seriously boozing that he has won the case at the court. This time, I did my job as a professional police without clouded sense of professionalism.

I was very punctual at court and testified to nail him down. A lot of drama unfolded at the court but let's leave that for another day. When he was convicted, I took my handcuffs and was ready to send him to prison since the prisons were not far from the court until his family members quickly intervened by paying the court fine. My late Chief Inspector walked to me and told me that next time tighten police suspects twice as you tight civilian suspects. They are very dangerous. In short, I was nearly dismissed for allowing professionalism to collide with interest of nepotism. It was my then commander who intervened and saved my job else I would have been out of job by now.

Donkorkrom police turned armed robbers escapees case might be very different from my case but not too far from conflicts of interest cases. Interest in the sense that these might be police officers who might have stayed in the same barracks and worked in the same station for years only to be given handcuffs to their own colleagues put it on their hands and escort them at gunpoint as they have been doing with them to civilian criminals. At that moment you are in a state of disbelieve and shock. You are yet to come to terms with what your colleagues have done. At that time, you feel whatever that is going on is not true.

You break down with emotions. There may be public outcry but that time you see your colleague as a friend in need and feels you have some magical powers to save him or her. At times, you try to even coach them to say what say or what not say. You become so emotional to the extent that some forget they are still police officers. I have once seen a commander who wept bitterly when he was asked by his Regional commander to bring his subordinates who have been involved in misconduct to be dealt with. The commander never recovered after his subordinates were dismissed.

Next time if you have a police officer turned criminal in your custody, tighten him twice as you tighten civilians and remember not to buy them "bofrotu". We were told it is the oil from the doughnuts that was used to lubricate their hands for easy removal of the handcuffs. Buy them "eburo ne nkatie" to keep their jaws busy. In police service, negligently allowing prisoner to escape has the weight of murder. No mercy for you. May I ask how come it's only police officers who escaped and left their civilian counterpart behind? May be their civilian doesn't eat "bofrotu" so he doesn't know how to rob the oils around the hand to facilitate quick removal of handcuffs.

May the soul of Chief Inspector Danso continue to rest since the advice he gave to me is a good one. Other police officers I have investigated since he gave me that advice tell me I am very wicked and I tell them that is rule of the game. No one can be trusted.

I am glad those police officers turned armed robbers have been recaptured but anytime you are dealing with one, remember what late Chief Danso said.It is either you stay or you go with the one who is already on his way home. You can help but be reasonable so that you will be there next time to help yourself and others.

I just put on my microscopic lens and sitting at far away Peki looking at how conflicting this case might be.

Ahanta Apemenyimheneba Kwofie III
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