We need to transform police cells — IGP

The Inspector-General of Police (IGP), Dr George Akuffo Dampare says the Ghana Police Service needs support to transform police cells across the country.

He said the transformation agenda was necessary for ensuring that human dignity was preserved in the cells.

“What we want to say is that irrespective of whoever is involved, he is a suspect, he can be a criminal, he can be a convict, the humanity of that person is like ours and we cannot take the dignity of it out. We have to be very humanistic because it can happen to anyone of us…,” the IGP said.

He said this during one of his visits to Police Stations to interact with officers.

The IGP said the Police Administration had noticed a “systemic issue and we want to address it,” and charged police personnel to move away from the “old police mentality of defensiveness” and admit that many police cells were congested, as such, people were “breathless” in there.

He said it was wrong for police cells to be congested to cause suspects to suffocate.

The IGP said on one of his visits to Asamankese, he and his team noticed that the cells were “open” and even though they had water closets, they were positioned in such a way that if anyone went in to use the washroom, everyone in the cells could see the person.

“Imagine you’re one of the 25, will you be comfortable? You can’t put 25 people in that space and at times they get to 30 or 40 and they are breathless,” the IGP lamented whilst addressing a Station Officer.