The President of the Institute of Security Disaster and Emergency Studies (ISDES), Dr. Ishmael Norman, has called for a Commission of Inquiry to investigate criminal cells within the police force.

According to him, it is imperative to determine and probe the killing of two key suspects who were policce officers in the ongoing police investigation into the bullion van heists. The two suspects, Constable Reindolph Gyimah Ansah and Corporal Stephen Kwaku Nyame, were shot dead during a gunfight between police officers and the criminal gang involved in the bullion van heist at Borteyman in Ashaiman.

Dr. Norman revealed that he found it suspicious that following the shootout as the Police had narrated, it was only the two key suspects that had sustained gunshot wounds and died.

“It just doesn’t make sense, no matter how hard you try to be charitable to the police, it just doesn’t make sense… So, it was incredulous to say the least that the two essential people got killed, nobody else got killed. Where do we go from here? The questions that flow from there is what did they know and who did they know information about that was damning to those people? If they were killed, if they were murdered, who gave the order? We need to have a commission of inquiry. Not only about the killing of the two suspects, but we also need to have a commission of inquiry to dig into criminal cells within the police force”.
Dr. Ishmael Norman

Addressing corruption within Police Service

The President for the Institute indicated that, Dr. George Akuffo Dampare has always expressed the resolve to rid Ghana of criminals and from the “way he talks, [but] it’s as if the problem is not within the police, it is the civilians who are enemies of the state”. The true enemies of the state, he noted, are the “policemen themselves”.

“… Not all of them. So, we need to see how deep the corruption in the police is and who [they] are, who stand to benefit and so on and so forth… I will like to know the money that was taken from all the banks and who got what and how much? Because there are too many unanswered questions and until the evidence is made very clear, the Ghana Police is going to have a much bigger image problem to manage”.
Dr. Ishmael Norman

Dr Norman iterated the need for an inquiry to ascertain what the “two important witnesses, persons of interest or probably suspects” who were shot knew. According to him, the issue must be probed to also find out if there was any interview, whether statements were taken from them and also whether they were interrogated.

“I know they’re doing investigation and there’s not a lot they can tell us now, but we need to know what the Police knows from those two men and why let them accompany them”.
Dr. Ishmael Norman

Following this, Dr Norman noted that once the Commission of Inquiry takes place, other criminal cells within the Police Service will be discovered.

“I think if you do that in camera, a lot of people will come forward because if this cell has been broken, there are other cells within the police. These young men didn’t just get up and go do what they did, they were being controlled, they were just Manchurian candidates, they were told what to do and they’ll go and do it, they get a portion and the bulk of the money goes. It’s a mafia style of operation. There are other cells in the Ghana Police we need to get to the bottom of it”.
Dr. Ishmael Norman