2 COPS INTERDICTED FOR ALLEGED EXTORTION (Page 19)

29/09/2008
Story: Mary Mensah
TWO policemen who allegedly extorted GH¢25,000 from a student at Madina have been interdicted by the Police Administration.
General Lance Corporal Emmanuel Awadzie, stationed at the Adentan Police Station and Lance Corporal Solomon Awuku of the Madina police have been placed in police custody and are currently assisting the police in their investigations.
The Director of the Police Public Affairs Directorate, DSP Kwesi Ofori, who disclosed this to the Daily Graphic in Accra, said at about 11.00 p.m. on September 10, 2008, Lance Cpl Awadzie sought the assistance of Cpl Awuku at the Madina Police Station to assist him arrest the student at his house at Akatsi Abor, a suburb of Madina, for an unknown offence.
He said the two policemen drove in Awadzie’s car to the Agbogba Police Post and reported to another policeman on duty at the charge office that they needed assistance to effect the arrest of a wanted suspect.
He said after Cpl Awadzie had convinced the third policeman to believe that they were indeed performing an official assignment, he made entries into the station notebook, picked a riffle and followed the two.
DSP Ofori said between 1.00 am and 2.00 a.m. the three policemen broke into the room of the complainant while he was in bed with his fiancee.
He said they told the complainant that he was on the police wanted list at headquarters and they had been sent to effect his arrest for investigations.
DSP Ofori said they arrested and handcuffed the complainant and the girlfriend after which they ransacked the whole room in search of money.
When they failed in getting any money in the complainant’s room, they packed a computer with accessories together with some documents into a VW Passat saloon car with registration number GR 979 Z belonging to the complainant.
They asked the complainant where he had kept his money and after threatening to shoot him he told them that the money was at the house of his girlfriend.
They drove the complainant and his girlfriend to her house where they collected the GH¢25,000.00 and afterwards released them and sped off in their car thus abandoning the complainant's car.
A complaint was later lodged at the Madina Police Station and the policeman from Agbogba police was arrested because he was in uniform during the incident.
Upon interrogation, he mentioned the two others as those who sought his assistance to help in apprehending a wanted suspect from his hideout.
DSP Ofori said since the beginning of the year, 74 police officers had been dismissed from the service for gross misconduct.
He said 91 personnel were also sacked in 2007, adding that this was being done to inject sanity into the service to serve as a deterrent to others.