My RTC Experience

Published July 30, 2019

In the latter part of June, the RTC hosted participants from Ghana, Cabo Verde, Liberia and Guinea Bissau for a Public Corruption training. It was great to welcome back an alumnus from Ghana who had previously attended several RTC trainings. We had a quick chat and he shared a few thoughts with the RTC alumni community.

I am a Superintendent of Police with the Ghana Police Service and I have thirty-three (33) years of law enforcement experience. Currently, I am the Director of the Drug Law Enforcement Unit (DLEU) at the Criminal Investigation Department and I have oversight responsibility over all drug investigations and all the regional drug units within the country. Additionally, I double as the focal person in Ghana for the West Africa Regional Platform for Combatting Drug Trafficking and Organized Crimes and the UNDP’s fight against narcotics.

My first encounter with the RTC was in 2012. Since then, I have attended multiple training deliveries at the RTC.

 RTC courses have equipped me with specialized investigative tools, which have resulted in several successful cases. Following the Advanced Narcotics Investigations course that I attended in 2014, I shared the skills and tools for drug investigations that I acquired at the RTC with my officers in DLEU and as a result, the unit was able to make more drug seizures and arrests within that period. Consequently, the drug unit successfully conducted several anti-narcotics operations in Ghana and other West African countries.

One other course that I greatly benefited from was the Strategic Management for Law Enforcement (SMLE) in 2015. As the DLEU Commander at the time, I had almost 200 police officers under my supervision. This course helped me to improve my leadership skills in guiding and bringing out the best in the officers to achieve maximum results in working drug-related cases.

Drug investigations require a lot of tools and skills to succeed – intelligence and evidence gathering, information handling, surveillance, document analysis, personnel and resource management, etc. Fortunately, the courses offered at the RTC provided all the necessary tools in the fight against drug trafficking and other related crimes.

Between 2017 and 2019, the Drug Law Enforcement Unit has made over 100 arrests involving drug related cases. At the beginning of this year, we gathered intelligence about some owners of drinking pubs who were involved in the illicit trafficking and peddling of narcotics in a suburb of Accra. Officers in my unit were assigned to mount surveillance in the target area. At the end of the operation, several suspects were arrested.

The public respected the way that the police managed and treated the information that they received from residents of the community, and appreciated that successful arrests were made. This has encouraged others to provide the police with essential information to effectively fight crimes.

I am grateful to the RTC leadership for this opportunity!!

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