Stop Or I�ll Shoot You - Police Commander Threatens Officers

The James Town District Police Commander, Deputy Superintendant of Police (DSP) Franklin Addai, surprised onlookers and his own men last Thursday when threatened to shoot any of them who dared to arrest NDC hoodlums who ran riot in Accra. Credible sources told DAILY GUIDE this was during the heat of confusion in the Odododiodioo constituency in which a group of machete and arms-wielding supporters of the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC) in the area were running riot. It was a day after the parliamentary candidate of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) in the Ablekuma South, Ursula Owusu, and a member of the party�s Communications team, Samuel Abdulai Jianapor, were attacked and brutalised in the area by some of the NDC youth, allegedly led by one Tsikata, Bruno and Nii Okai. Anybody who saw them was compelled to take cover for fear of being victimised. The police received information that some NPP youth were on rampage in apparent response to the previous day�s incident in which Ursula Owusu was assaulted by NDC machomen. When they arrived at the scene, the police managed to arrest one of the miscreants. But upon reaching a spot around the St Mary�s Anglican Church near the Ussher Polyclinic, they were confronted by some of the marauding gangsters who, apart from seeking to confront the police over the arrest of their colleague, were wielding dangerous weapons and chanting war songs. Some of the policemen who had been detailed to maintain law and order, including the armoured squadron which arrested the young man, began firing warning shots into the open air to disperse the crowd. DSP Franklin Addai, who has been accused by the NPP of biased, realised the miscreants were NDC supporters and immediately removed a pistol from its holster and pointed it at his own men, ordering them to stop shooting or he would shoot any of them who dared defied his orders. The dumbfounded policemen had no option but to obey the order of the senior officer, a situation that was said to have emboldened the miscreants to charge on the police.