Police officers in Ghana suspended over crackdown on protesting students

The Ghana Police Service has suspended three of its officers, including a regional commander, after Monday’s (June 13) clashes with students from the Islamic Senior high school in the Ashanti region.

At least 20 students sustained various degrees of injuries through the police crackdown.

The students were part of many who had staged a demonstration in front of the school calling for speed bumps to be installed following a number of accidents, according to local media reports, sighted by Africanews.

In a statement on Tuesday (June 14) morning, the police admitted that “handling of the incident was poor and fell short of our standard operating procedure on crowd control”.

Parts of the statement also reads that officers had used pepper spray and fired warning shots after the students had pelted them with stones, but nobody was hit by a bullet.

“As a result, DCOP Kwesi Akomeah-Apraku who was acting as the Regional Commander has been removed from his position and has been interdicted.”

“Two other officers, ACP Mr George Ankomah, the Regional Operations Officer and ACP Mr Alex Cudjoe Acquah, the Suame Divisional Police Commander have also been interdicted to make way for a thorough investigation into the matter.”

The issue has been leading twitter trends in Ghana with many criticizing the Ghana police for poor crowd control.