He said this after he led a delegation of MPs on his committee to visit the school on Friday, June 17, following the chaotic incident that occurred on Monday, June 13.
“The students whether they are right or not they exceed their boundaries and overreacted. Same applies to the Police officers too, I think they also treated them like armed robbers, it was too much, they also exceeded their boundaries .
“We take a cue from what has happened to these students so that next time when Police are going out there, their team called crowd control ,they should know the ages of the people that they are going to deal with,” the Assin Central MP said, as quoted by 3news.com.
He went further to advise the Inspector-General of Police (IGP) to take the training of his officers on crowd control seriously.
“If you see the students that were injured, the Police officers, no matter the reasons went too far. A girl that I sympathize with is a girl who can’t breath properly because they hit her head with a gun, that was too much for a girl, not even a boy and for that matter not a man or woman. So I will not be here to condemn anybody but I will pleaded with the Police High Command that next time they should take the crowd control unit to training and let them exercise patience.”
Students of the Islamic Senior High School in Kumasi had mounted road blocks on a road in front of their school, as part of a protest against frequent accidents, as several calls on the city authorities to fix speed ramps fell on deaf ears.
Police officers fired tear gas and alleged live bullets, leaving no less than 25 of the students injured and unconscious. They were all rushed to the hospital.
Meanwhile, following a visit by the IGP, Dr. George Akuffo Dampare, and his top officials to the school to ascertain the facts of the incident, the Police Administration has removed the Deputy Ashanti Regional Commander, DCOP Kwasi Akomeah Apraku, from his position.
Two other senior officers have also been interdicted following an initial police probe into the disturbance.
“It was further established that even though nobody was hit by a bullet, the Police handling of the incident was poor and fell short of our standard operating procedure on crowd control,” the Police announced in a statement Monday night.
According to the statement, the conduct of the officers who responded to the protest by the students fell short of professional police conduct on crowd control.
