A security analyst, Mr Emmanuel Sowatey, has charged politicians not to vilify or run down the police or their work.
He said although the police had some history of unprofessionalism, in seeking their short to long-term interests, politicians should not run down state institutions as that would be to their detriment.
He said whereas in the colonial era the Police Service was mostly populated by people who had no formal education, today's police officers were professional lawyers, first degree or master’s degree holders.
Therefore, he said, they went by their duties, whether investigating, reviewing a case or preparing a docket, professionally.
Mr Sowatey said this in an interview in response to last week's acquittal of eight people who tried rescuing 13 of their members standing trial for beating up the President's Security appointee in the Ashanti Region.
The eight, popularly referred to as Delta 8, were acquitted because of lack of evidence to prosecute them on the charge of the disturbance of court and resisting arrest.
Not right
"Running down the police because of lapses is not right," Mr Sowatey said.
"It reconfirms widely held notions of the public that the police are incompetent," he added. He also stated that the practice of undermining the police demoralised officers, making them unable to give their best in subsequent high-profile cases.
Undue influence
Mr Sowatey said politicians should not assume that the police were not professional.
That assumption was evident in the Attorney-General's explanation that the acquittal was because of unclear evidence from the police.
He said during a tour on April 27, 2017 by the Ashanti Regional Minister, a police officer, Assistant Commissioner of Police (ACP) Emmanuel Amissah, said undue political interference was the biggest challenge faced by the service.
Furthermore, when the Minister of Information, Mr Mustapha Hamid, asserted on Starr FM, a local FM station, on May 17, 2017 that the prosecutor did not do his work well on the Delta 8 case, the prosecutor, one ACP Otchere, contradicted him.
"By contradicting the minister openly, he spoke for a lot of police officers who daily face undue pressure and harassment from politicians," he added.
The security analyst said all these were examples of how politicians run down state institutions for their interest.
Write memoirs
Mr Sowatey charged retired police officers to write down their memoirs to bring out some of the undue pressures, psychological and emotional pain they felt when they were undermined by politicians while in service.
That, according to him, would help posterity by bringing out the challenges for solutions to be worked out by all Ghanaians.
Context
Last Wednesday, the Delta 8, accused of aiding the escape from lawful custody of some 13 members of theirs who were standing trial at the Kumasi Metropolitan Assembly (KMA) Circuit Court, were acquitted. Media reports indicated that the Attorney-General advised the discontinuance of the case because the police did not do due diligence in the case.
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