Some Ghanaians have voiced the challenges and maltreatments they face at the hands of personnel of the Ghana Police Service during efforts to effect arrests for offences committed.
According to these individuals, the police subject them to various maltreatments, such as slapping and beating them up during the arrest, without granting them the opportunity to hear their side of the story.
Article 14(2) of the Ghanaian Constitution mandates that a person arrested, restricted, or detained must be informed immediately, in a language they understand, of the reason for their arrest, restriction, or detention, and of the right to a lawyer of their choice.
This is to ensure that the supposed offenders had knowledge of their offence before being detained.
Somele residents, predominantly drivers of Madina Redco, a suburb of the Greater Accra region, expressed their utmost disappointment in the police for breaching what the constitution states, and arresting them unlawfully for an offence committed.
According to them, they are mandated to demand some answers from the police on their arrests, particularly what necessitated the arrest, the arrest’s warrant, and the division from which they had come, among others.
However, they accused most policemen who caused arrest by deliberately ignoring all these right processes to arrest a person for a wrongdoing, neither do they allow the individuals to ask questions.
To deepen their ordeals, they alleged that, the police end up bullying them whenever they demand for their rights.
“A woman who placed her kiosk on my land where I have my carpentry shop and has been causing troubles there, went to report me at the police station claiming that I had beaten her, I was at my workplace eating when four policemen showed up to arrest me. I asked them the reason for my arrest and further told them that I would cooperate with them after eating.
“They began to apply force on me when I refused to follow them without knowing my offence and before I realised, one of them had slapped me from behind and the other policeman used his gun to hit my ribs multiple times and forcefully dragged me in their car without telling me the exact crime or offence I had committed,” a victim by name Samuel Kwaku Amponsah recounted on Monday, May 19, 2025.
A taxi driver whose name was disclosed as Justice also shared the plights of drivers during their encounter with the police on the roads.
“The professionalism of police personnel is not many in this country. Sometimes, after they have stopped you on the road and demanded for your driving documents and obliged accordingly, they still go the extra mile to find you at fault to enable them to arrest you without telling you your crime,” he stated.
They called on the government and the heads of the Ghana Police Service to ensure that the police personnel do their works diligently and handle them in the professional in line with do and don’ts aligning their code of ethics.
