Cocaine Police Sacked

The Inspector General of Police (IGP), Paul Tawiah Quaye, has relieved two senior Police Officers; Assistant Commissioner of Police ACP Vincent Dedzo, Deputy CID Chief, and Deputy Superintendent of Police DSP Kofi Adzei Tuadzra of their duties. The decision of the Chief Constable was to enable investigations into the cocaine scandal that rocked the Police Service. It followed a petition sent to the President by DSP Gifty Mawuenyegah Tehoda against her dismissal from the Police Service. She mentioned the name of ACP Dedzo, Deputy Director-General of the Criminal Investigations Department (CID), as being the principal character behind the swapping of the cocaine with sodium bicarbonate (baking soda). A source at the Police Headquarters told Daily Guide that DSP Kofi Tuadzra was also interdicted because he was the head of the Narcotics Unit at the time of the incident. DSP Tehoda also accused the Director of the Bureau of National Investigations (BNI), Yaw Donkor, of also compromising his position during the investigations into the scandal, but he remains at post. The Chief Constable was said to have taken the decision which took effect from Tuesday on arrival in the country from a trip abroad. In a six-page petition to President John Mahama, DSP Tehoda described her dismissal as “a grand scheme by the CID to use me as a pawn to cover up obvious wrongdoings within the set-up.” In the said petition dated September 25, 2012, Mrs. Tehoda noted, “Recently, I was served with a letter from a Central Disciplinary Board of the Police Service, purporting to dismiss me from the service pursuant to a purported review of a service enquiry.” According to her, when she was eventually released from BNI cells, she had a conversation with Mr. Awolenga who told “me that because of the hype of the case in the media, it was possible that people might come to whisper into my ears about how the cocaine got swapped." “He asked that in case I chanced upon any information, I should co-operate with them and make it available. Indeed, not quiet long after my bail, some young men approached my Pastor and indicated that they knew people in the cocaine underworld who had credible information on the missing cocaine," she noted. For this reason, DSP Tehoda said she did not hesitate to lead them to BNI operatives, adding that in the course of time, they became informants and that through the assistance of those informants, the BNI operatives got into contact with sources in the cocaine underworld who volunteered startling and damning revelations. She indicated that ACP Dedzo “stole the missing cocaine. At the time, that was the latter part of 2008, he was the Head of the Narcotics Unit of the CID.’’ After allegedly stealing the cocaine from a safe, whose key was in his exclusive possession, DSP Tehoda said he handed it over to a junior officer by name Mensah Cudjoe, who handed it over to a dealer by name Cantona, and it ended up in the market at a value of $ 19,000. “These were the startling revelations from the informants, one of whom claimed he had dealt in cocaine with ACP Vincent Dedzo since 2006," she stated. She narrated that operatives of the BNI mounted surveillance on Mensah Cudjoe and arrested him one evening in possession of two kilograms of cocaine and that during interrogation; Cudjoe disclosed information on his past dealings with ACP Dedzo in which “he confessed to carrying Cocaine for ACP Dedzo on three occasions, including the missing one." “He confirmed that he indeed gave it to Cantona. In respect of the two other occasions, he mentioned one Kwame Atta and one Adjei as recipients. It is pertinent to note that the four names which were floated by informants as people who usually dealt with ACP Vincent Dedzo in the cocaine business were all confirmed during the interrogation of ACP Dedzo’s alleged courier," she noted. She therefore noted that the stage was set for the arrest, interrogation and prosecution of ACP Dedzo, but the Director of BNI refused to proceed. “Besides, by refusing to proceed against ACP Vincent Dedzo, he still has the leverage to orchestrate my removal from the Police Service by all kinds of manoeuvring with the top hierarchy of the service,” she noted. Insisting, “All the manoeuvring by ACP Dedzo to have me removed from the Ghana Police Service was to serve one purpose; to use me as pawn and portray me as the one responsible for the swapping of the cocaine exhibit so as to divert attention from him as the main culprit." "Sir, even though I am minded to go public with the information I have on this issue in order to clear to my name and restore some integrity to my profession,[I have ] deferred to your high office, being hopeful that you will intervene for sanity to prevail in the security apparatus," she told the President. Source: Daily Guide