Social media does not spare bad police officers and indeed others working for the state in other departments, whose conducts constitute aberration to acceptable standards.
In the past few weeks, two police officers have been put on the spot as their unusual conducts trended on the aforementioned channel.
When a senior NCO of the law enforcement department turns up at a wee smoking joint in uniform to “high”, he must either be stupid or simply foolhardy. The video of the said Sergeant, now on interdiction, and unlikely to survive the Service Enquiry, says it all about how some police officers do not understand what image means and their being ambassadors of the law enforcement department.
The video shows the Sergeant being rubbished by a man who is clearly an addict and whose beef with the police officer is that he snitches on the pushers even as he is a patron of the joint.
The video would not have trended the way it did but for the principal character being a police officer and holding a joint of what looked like a wrapped Indian Hemp.
This was not the end of bad police officers being put on the spot on the public space. The Formed Police Unit (FPU) Sergeant who shunned a stop order at a police barrier only to crush the vehicle he was driving and exposing the Indian Hemp content, a couple of days ago, is yet another expose which has not been helpful to the image of the police.
There have been other instances of criminalities leveled against some police officers, some of them still in court; these and the recent ones have, however, triggered swift Police Administration reaction. The interdiction of the said police officers, as investigations continue, is standard practice and shows that law enforcement personnel who misconduct themselves in opposition to the oath they swore to work as police officers, will carry their own crosses when they are caught in the public net.
Regardless of the number of police officers nabbed for not living up to expectation, we cannot live without a police service.
The Police Administration, under especially the current leadership, is turning all stones to ensure that the service performs to the billing of the public.
No institution is devoid of bad nuts as history has taught us. In the teaching profession, medicine and media, there have been occasional busting of bad nuts whose conducts have impugning against the integrity of their professions and occupations.
It behooves us as citizens and beneficiaries of police service to cooperate with the Police Administration to flush out the bad nuts whose continued stay in the law enforcement department will impact negatively on its image, and rob it of the shine it requires to win public reverence.
We know the pains taken in enlisting persons who are bereft of negative traits, but total knowledge of the stuff men and women are made of are not assured. Such knowledge is the domain of the Almighty God. It is when the true colours of such bad nuts manifest that the action against them should be taken.
Most police officers are good and serving the country well but the bad nuts are damaging the image of the service hence the eroded public confidence in the police.
