Short Commission: Police Testimony Shows Breakdown of Command, Control – Bentil

General News of Saturday, February 16, 2019

Source: Myjoyonline.com

2019-02-16

Vice-Chair of the IMANI Africa Policy Group said police chiefs' testimony at the Short Commission seemed to indicate a dysfunctional internal police.

Kofi Bentil said the accounts of DCOP Police Director George Alex Mensah and East Legon Division Police Commander George Asare at the Friday Commission session clearly showed that deteriorating.

"I detect a malfunction of the internal police … There is also a break in the chain of command and control … and command and control should never be broken," he told Newsfile , the news badysis program of Joy News.

Mr. Bentil's comment comes after a two-day sitting of the Commission chaired by Judge Emile Short and instructed by the President to investigate the violence that nearly sullied the by-elections of Ayawaso West Wuogon on January 31.

Police and national security officials appear to be contradicting each other in their televised report to the Commission on Disorders During the Elections.

While the national security chiefs who appeared before the same commission on Thursday said that the SWAT police vehicles used belonged to the service and that the masked men who were occupying them were police officers, George Alex Mensah said in his account. delivered Friday.

He added that the police did not know anything about the masked men and the vehicle they were using.

On the same day, the East Legon Police Commander, under whose jurisdiction the by-election and related violence took place, also stated that he had been completely excluded from the planning process of the by-election, but that he was aware of a National Security working group. deployed to monitor the elections.

But Mr Bentil, also a private lawyer, said the situation was worrisome.

He is shocked by the fact that the police hierarchy was unable to bring his officers together to fulfill what was perhaps his most basic mandate.

He added that it's never legal to hide anyone except in cases where he was under a clear and very serious command and control arrangement in very limited situations where he could not there is ambiguity.

"Tomorrow, this can happen at Jubilee House, in Parliament, or in any by-election. Someone then calls "SWAT" the pickup, and then the masked men get there. [to do whatever]and, because of what has happened, we will all badume that they belong to the national security system.

"They will kill everyone, leave and nobody will touch them. This is where the problem lies. When we do not have this coherent command and control arrangement and we have situations like this and people are not being challenged, we could easily create that gap where terrorists, ordinary people, butchers Criminals can just inflict damage on us. a lot of trouble, he says.

The Executive Director of the Media Foundation for West Africa, Sulemana Braimah, shares the opinion of Mr. Bentil.

He said the story of the police and national security officials over the past two days was appalling.

"If anyone thought that as a country we were safe and that our national security architecture is up and running, these people will start to rethink and change their minds to take awareness of reality, based on what we have heard in the past two days, our national security is not as it should be.

DCOP George Alex Mensah stated that the Service had no knowledge of the masked men or the origin of the outrageous "SWAT" vehicle, which scandalized Mr. Braimah.

He asked why the police were attentive and did nothing when men she did not know caused such chaos in their presence.

"The fundamental question is to ask yourself the following question: is it enough that the police tell us that we do not know them and that we do not know the car" and they just did what they have done and gone.

"If the police did not actually know them, car or did not know about their operations, how is it that none of these men were arrested?" How is it that the police did not arrest any of them, "he is questioned.

The story of the police is incredible in his eyes.