Nkawkaw Police Accused Of Verbal Assault

RESIDENTS OF Nkawkaw have accused the police in the area, mostly the junior ranks of verbal assault on them (residents) during encounters. According to the residents, those police officers easily become offended at a least or without provocation and use words such as �you are villagers, useless people, stupid, idiot, foolish� and several unprintable words. Most of their alleged victims who spoke to this reporter were commercial drivers and other suspects who had interaction with the police. On the part of the drivers, they accused the police that whenever the police on traffic duties confront them on either traffic offence or document inspection, instead of the police to use their professional ethics on them, they rather resort to verbal assault on them and sometimes physically assault them at the least offence. �They describe us as villagers, idiots, foolish people, illiterates among others,� a taxi driver stated. They said most of the unprofessional attitudes come from the junior ranks. Some suspects who were reported to the various police stations in the area also said, they were either physically or verbally assaulted by those �unprofessional� police officers but could not have the courage to report them to their superior officers for redress. One of the suspects who only gave his name as Bismark said, a certain Constable heaped insult on him when he was reported by his friends who he had a misunderstanding with him. Bismark said when he questioned the behavior of the police officer he (officer) became offended and held his shirt and nearly assaulted him but was stopped by a senior ranked officer. They have, therefore, appealed to the police commanders in the area and for that matter the Inspector General of Police to help educate such bad nuts in the service to ensure professionalism when dealing with the public. When the Nkawkaw Divisional Police Commander, Michael Avedetse was contacted, he said he has not received such a complaint from the public, but said any person who would be assaulted by the police in any form should be bold and report to the high authority for action to be taken.