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New Ghana, Neo-Colonial Police - the Legacy of Police Accountability, Part I

Public Agenda (Accra)
COLUMN
August 21, 2006
Posted to the web August 21, 2006

By Jean Y.T. Lukaz
Accra
As if by design, at the time when the 'bad cop' syndrome is hitting hard on the
Ghana Police Cartel, police brutalities are also on the rise. While some have
attributed the situation to bad training and lack of logistics, others are
pointing the rest of their fingers at the 'Third World corruption' syndrome.
Nevertheless, the investigative autopsy scales are tilting towards corrupted
national security agencies: the police, narcotics controllers and other secret
service agents at the Kotoka International Airport and the Tema and Takoradi
ports.
International peacekeeping involving the Ghana Police Service has enabled
otherwise poor police officers to enjoy some luxury through their dollar
stipends. At the other end of the scale, some local officers, especially those
involved in serious crime busting, have been lucky with their booty raids and
been able to acquire private cars, commercial taxis, commercial buses and even
built executive houses worth four hundred and sixty million plus
(¢460,000,000.00/$50,000.00) on annual salaries of less than twelve million
cedis (¢12,000,000.00/$1,300.00). Accountability?
If you have seen the Hollywood movie 'Catch Me If You Can', the true story of
criminal inheritance, then we should be looking back at the security and
accountability structures of Ghana as inherited from the British Colonial
rulers and as infiltrated by the America's Central Intelligence Agency (CIA):
the Third World-Hope-Killers.
Structural Legacy
Britain has a history of two types of policing: Royal Irish Constabulary and
the Metropolitan Police. The Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) was formed in 1836
to deal with the disturbances in British occupied Ireland. This police force
was organised like a military force: the RIC agents lived in barracks, the
different police units were headed by a commander whose orders the agents had
to obey, and the commander was directly responsible to the British
administration in Ireland.
The Metropolitan Police, first established in London in 1829, became a model
for the police in all British towns and cities. It was a civil police force
that was directed at the preservation of order and the prevention and detection
of crime. The Metropolitan Police was not organised as a military but as a
civilian force. Metropolitan Police agents were officially considered enforcers
of the law, not servants of any political government. The policemen all had the
same duties and were each individually accountable for their actions. The
Metropolitan force was also unarmed and its agents lived inside the community
they were responsible for.
The differences between these two British police forces may explain why the
British colonial rulers decided to introduce the Irish police model in its
colonies overseas. It could be established that the semi-military RIC police
force was better suited to establish, maintain, and secure the enforcement of
British imposed colonial laws. The police force established in the Gold Coast
was essentially a quasi-military force that was kept in barracks and was
separated from the community instead of being a community-oriented police.
British Colonial Policing
British colonialism always required the exercise of power through foreign
domination of the local populations. Indirect rule offered interventionist and
non-interventionist power options for British rule in the Gold Coast. In the
case of interventionist indirect rule, the native chiefs were governed by the
colony and their traditional administration was gradually adapted to the
foreign institutions imposed by British rule. Non-interventionist indirect rule
left the traditional authorities to their own whims and caprices, but only to
the extent that the over-all political and economic goals of colonialism were
not threatened.
When the British conquered the Gold Coast, they relied heavily on a military
force for the establishment of the territorial boundaries. Detachments of the
West India Regiment were brought into the Gold Coast in 1845 with the first
police force established in 1865, after the Lagos Armed Police model. It
consisted, next to British officers, largely of Hausas, the ethnic group which
was considered a warlike race. The Gold Coast Armed Police, or the Hausa
Constabulary as it was unofficially named, became the paramilitary police arm
of the colonial regime even before the proclamation of the colony in 1874.
Apart from Hausas, the police force also consisted of Fanti tribe members which
initially were the only police agents instructed in civil police duties.
The organisation of the police was not regulated by a common model in all the
British colonies, but tailored to suit local conditions. This combined
geographic spread and structural integration: "Indian and Egyptian paramilitary
policing provided examples of practice; the Royal Irish Constabulary offered a
structural model and, after 1907, regular training facilities for all officers;
the methods of organisation in English county forces, the London beat system,
and some of the paraphernalia of the Metropolitan Police, were transferred to
the coastal towns; and officers from other West African colonies and the
Caribbean islands also brought distinctive patterns and dimensions to civil
police work. The only common and underlying factors that determined police
recruitment policy were the notion of the martial race, responsible for the
high number of Hausas, and the principle of policing strangers by strangers.
Africans from other territories were called in to join the police for ce
because they were considered to bear a certain resemblance to the natives.
Militia Policing
As the need to monitor the colonial frontiers declined, the Gold Coast police
force did retain several military functions next to its civil duties which
included the collection of taxes. The police relied mostly on the indirect rule
of local chiefs to do their work in inland areas. The support of the chiefs was
secured and regulated through the Native Jurisdiction Ordinance, passed in 1878
and enforced in 1883. The Ordinance transferred most chiefly powers to the
Crown, but it also allowed tribal chiefs make by-laws, subject to the
Governor's consent. While the police force was in those early days expected to
interpret and administer the law and was free to exercise personal judgment,
unlike the soldiers who had to obey orders, the force was unstable and
disaffected.
The police grew unpopular with the native population, and, notwithstanding its
ethnic composition, it was perceived as an intrusive alien force. As early as
1886, police officers were stoned in Accra, because they were considered
traitors by the natives.
The Gold Coast Constabulary undertook both police and military functions till
1901 when it was officially divided into the Gold Coast Regiment and the Gold
Coast Constabulary. The centralised Gold Coast Constabulary was accompanied by
uniformed but unarmed Native Authority Forces for the enforcement of customary
laws. In the 1920s specialised civil police divisions were created (e.g.
separate Escort, Mines, and Railway Police units), but the police remained
first and foremost an armed force directed at the paramilitary protection of
the political and economic interests of the British and scarcely had anything
to do with community policing, except that of upholding the authority of
colonial rule.
Oppressive Policing
Post World War II, political instability and public unrest precipitated
structural changes in the police. In 1948 the police were caught unprepared as
riots mounted and this initiated a rapid expansion and gradual africanisation
of the Gold Coast police force. The force had expanded to no less than 8,000
agents, including Palestine recruits. The duties of the force were divided over
the General Police, a largely literate force engaged in criminal procedures,
and the Escort Police, which was illiterate and took care of routine watch
duties and patrols. The Escort Police had a special division, the Mounted
Escort Police, whose members wore a uniform that included an Indian cavalry-
style-turban (very familiar at independence anniversary celebrations).
The gradual expansion of the force was characterised by the policy of policing
strangers by strangers, riot policing and also an intensification of its
political and economic functions. Food shortages were causing riots and led to
the inauguration of the special anti-riot Elmina Mobile Force in 1948. The
police pamphlet "Riot Drill" provided instructions for riot control based on
experiences in the other British colonies.
After industrial unrests started to break out and a general strike had taken
place in 1949, self-government rhetoric by the National Liberation Movement
fuelled civil disturbances against British colonial rule, including attacks on
police barracks. The police's Special Branch, specialised in political
intelligence work, tried fruitlessly to gather intelligence on the character of
the unrests in the country.
As the first general elections were held in 1951, law and order, nevertheless,
remained under British control for another six years. Finally, after 113 years
of British rule, the Gold Coast gained independence in 1957 and was renamed
Ghana. The Gold Coast Regiment was reformed into the Ghana Army. The Gold Coast
Constabulary was renamed the Ghana Police Service, and remained patterned after
the British imposed police system, enforcing criminal codes inherited from
British colonialism.
The police force was further restructured in 1959 when the Police Training
School was opened in Accra and by 1960 the force was made up of 90 percent
Ghanaians. After an abortive assassination attempt on President Dr Kwame
Nkrumah by a police constable, the police was disarmed, and the President
initiated a secret security police. The 1966 military-police coup d'etat was
successful in ousting Nkrumah's regime with significant input from the
intelligence services of the police.
The transition from military-policing to civil and community policing in Ghana
has been a long bumpy ride yet to be achieved.


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