The Inspector General of Police (IGP), Dr George Akuffo Dampare, is attempting to bring down the average police response time to ten minutes.
This commitment forms part of a larger plan to enhance the fight against crime.
“The response time, we are looking at the average of less than 10 minutes,” he said on Thursday.
At a public presentation on the evolving nature of policing in Ghana, Dr. Dampare presented a number of initiatives taken to improve the image of the service and the welfare of personnel.
According to the IGP, the service has already implemented crime-fighting tactics that are showing promise.
He told the gathering at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology that “we keep deepening the number of police officers we put out there.”
“Now we have added motorbikes to it and very soon, we are deploying about 2,000 motorbikes across the country that our roads are going to be policed.”
He also admitted that policing had a poor reputation that had been passed down through the generations, but he also mentioned that initiatives had been launched to change that.
“There are issues that you see us as unprofessional, thank you. We’ve never said that there are not a couple of people who are doing things in a corrupt way tarnishing the image of the service, we are doing all what we can to handle it. But we’ll never accept the tag that we are the most corrupt institution in the country. It is unfounded,” he stressed.
The IGP urged public support for the police while reassuring those who work hard that the agency will fully support them.
“Each one of us at all the change is appropriately empowered, such that as long as you do what is right, and you do it professionally, we will have your back and to the level that everybody is ‘arrestable’ including the IGP. So just do what is right, irrespective of your rank and you’ll have the full backing of the whole Police Administration, and nobody can intimidate you” he concluded.
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