Thursday, February 21, 2013
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Have
you got anything for me?
Generally, we don’t get the law enforcement
we deserve.
I suppose a great litmus test on the
quality of a culture is the behaviour of its police force. In the UK, a vast, conspiratorial
network of corruption has recently been uncovered relating to football
tragedies, phone hacking, framing suspects and everything in between. But on
the streets, generally, you feel that law and order prevails without the taint
of bent behaviour on the law’s part.
Wherever I have travelled, either for work
or for pleasure, I can, more or less, remember what the police were like. Back
in 1968 when I was in Paris during the student revolt as an active supporter,
the police were baton crazy against these leftist destabilisers of the State.
On one occasion we were relaxing away from the barricades having a picnic on the
Seine. A police van drew up and a half dozen stick wielders charged down.
“Speak English, for God’s sake,” said a French friend. We did. They said we
were there for sex and would soon have our clothes off. We pretended,
vociferously, not to understand. Eventually they went off, batons unbloodied.
I was in an insolvent New York in the early
1980s. The train from the airport was as heavily guarded as I can ever
remember. In fact an entire train had been ‘stolen’ not long before. I had to
ease past two police officers at the doors of an extraordinary caterpillar of a machine,
multi-coloured carriages with inner city graffiti, as though it was camouflaged to pass through downtown garishness. They were brusque – and frightened. When we set off
they walked up and down the aisles as though one of us was Matt Damon from the
Bourne Trilogy and they were going to discover who. What do you do? Shut your
eyes and ostrich the journey out, hoping that when you open them you will be in
Grand Central Station and safe?
In Uzbekistan I was giving an impromptu
lecture on the street when I got jostled by secret police, remnants of the KGB,
I assume. They had taken exception to my using the word democracy. I remember that their firearms seemed more threatening because they were in plain clothes. As
though wearing a uniform ensures that the would-be shooter is constrained by 'procedures’. While in Tashkent, a Canadian friend had some money
stolen. The police came and took away the house staff and beat them for a
couple of days until one owned up. We never knew whether the boy had committed
the act or couldn't take more bruising. We wouldn’t have told the police had we
known – even though the theft was quite major.
I could go on and on with stories but want
to say something about police in Ghana. Everyone without fail here knows that
corruption is everywhere. Whatever your misdemeanour (mostly on the roads) you
will find yourself searching for a polite way of offering them money. They are
not interested in your explanation of being stranded on a crossroads because
you avoided being hit by a taxi running a red light, for example. An attempted
explanation is met with the non-sequitor, “Are you trying to tell me my job?”
In this case I eventually dredged up a useful phrase from my wide lexicon,
“Can I make a contribution to the police station?” And we were free.
A driver of ours, gentle and late middle
aged, was cuffed and thrown into a police cell for training a learner without
his licence which he had left at home along with the boy's. They were taken to
court and outlandish fines levied by a judge whose complicity with the police
was painfully evident and whose loyalty to the State’s revenue stream via
fining was paramount. Police can use a variety of indirect requests for palm
greasing but my favourite euphemism, at a
barrier on the way to Cape Coast, is “Cleanse my blood.”
Ghana has everything to be a prosperous
nation. It has an extraordinary GNP largely from oil and cocoa, a genuinely
peace-loving population, enough rain to help farming feed its population. There
is no reason why corruption should be endemic from politicians all the way down
to a police force that is reimbursed reasonably well when compared to the rest
of the population. But everyone pays their bribes, from doctors to road sweepers,
from water sellers letting traffic cops take a sachet without payment
to allow them to sell illegally by the lights, to bankers wanting to park on yellow
lines. You cannot deal with governmental bodies such as customs without bribes
if you are in international business, or your goods could remain forever
untouched and gathering hamatan dust in a bonded warehouse.
For Ghana to become a developed country,
corruption has to be tackled. Loyalty to family, clan and tribe – which pressurizes
individuals to bend the rules and siphon off money - must somehow be subordinated to a
loyalty to the State. In return the State must reward public loyalty with fair
justice for all. Trust in the police at a day to day level is paramount or the economy will always
fail.
Labels: #Policeing. #Ghana. #Corruption.
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