The directive by the Inspector General of Police (IGP), James Oppong-Boanuh, to all the Regional Commands to refrain from granting interviews to the media should be reconsidered, since this injunction could create room for conjecture.
The order is that a journo who needs any information on any matter that needs the police in their division or region to respond to must officially put in a formal request to the Director-General/CID at the CID Headquarters, Accra.
This recent directive is creating a gap between the Regional Commands and media personnel in their various jurisdictions. For example, certain critical information the media have to share with the Divisional or Regional Commands are withheld from the police, because of the bureaucratic bottlenecks introduced. The media has a feeling that the cordial police-media relationship that used to exist has been broken by the new order.
About two months ago, the chairman of the Ashanti Regional Chapter of the Ghana Journalists Association (GJA) expressed his frustration in a radio interview granted to a sister station in Kumasi. He expressed worry about why he or his members had to be directed to Accra or email the national headquarters for information from the police in the Ashanti Region.
The directive is, indeed, very frustrating and The Chronicle can cite two personal experiences by our reporters. The first was at the Shai-Osudoku Divisional Police Command where the paper was directed to the national headquarters on an alleged Paedophile story that it was investigating at Bawaleshie in the Shai-Osudoku District. The reporter had to abandon the story due to the frustration in trying to get answers.
The second was in July, this year, when The Chronicle requested for the first quarter crime statistics from the Tema Regional Police Command. The reporter was asked to put the request into writing. This was done on 1st August, 2022 via email to the Regional Command. On that same day, the police acknowledged receipt of the email and promised to revert to The Chronicle.
The next day, the paper received another email from the Tema Regional Command, which read: “Concerning your mail Requesting First Quarter Crime Statistics for Tema Regional Police Command dated 1st August 2022, the Regional Police Command gratefully directs you to put in a formal request to the Director-General/CID at the CID Headquarters for you to be furnished with your request, please.”
Hitherto, the media accessed such information from the Divisional and Regional Commands with ease.
Other times, the Regional Commanders respectfully hosted the media in their offices to update their guests on happenings in their jurisdictions and courted the support of the media to help them to combat crime.
The media, in turn, assisted the Divisional and Regional Commanders to succeed. It was no wonder that at their annual West African Security Services Association (WASSA) get-together, the media and police dined together and smoothened rough edges to achieve more results going forward.
The police have always maintained that policing is a shared responsibility, but does the IGP not think that injuncting the Regional Commands from directly sharing information with the media will bureaucratic bottlenecks?
The lack of fruitful and healthy communication between couples is a recipe for disaster and The Chronicle would implore the IGP to reconsider his decision in order to keep the ‘wedding’ between the police and media water-tight.
