Accident vehicles take over police stations

Source: Today Newspaper  -  Today can authoritatively report that the various Police Stations and barracks in and around the national capital have turned into dumping grounds for accident vehicles and other means of road transport such as motorcycles impounded by the police for one or the other reason.

Besides constituting a nuisance to members of the public who go to police stations to make enquiries, lodge or respond to complaints, the haphazard manner in which these vehicles are parked creates an eyesore.

At every police station and barracks visited by the Today team, it was realised that patrons of these public places could not freely move about or easily get parking lots for their vehicles raising issues of whether the lands were being put to optimum use and also casting doubts if someone was in charge.

Among the police stations visited include, Tesano, Amasaman, Mile 7, and Police headquarters, Nima, and Accra Central in the heart of the city as well as Kasoa in the Central region.

At each of these police stations, the team saw that some of the vehicles had been damaged beyond repairs with some overgrown with weeds and appeared the owners had abandoned them.

Residents in the vicinity of the police stations told Today they had even lost count of the number of years some of the vehicles had been sitting at the police stations and wondered why the police had still not taken any decision to dispose of them. Some police personnel who had been at post between 6 and 10 years admitted some of the vehicles had been there for many years before they were posted to the stations.

At the Accra Central Police Station yard, a source disclosed that some of the impounded vehicles have virtually become state property in the light of how long they have been there.

The situation was nothing different at the police stations at Amasaman in the Ga West district capital.

Apart from the damaged accident vehicles, our team further observed that both motorbikes and cars were so many that the place could easily be mistaken for a scrap dumping area rather than a police station.

A source disclosed that the lack of space in the yard compelled the Amasaman Motor Traffic and Transport Department (MTTD) to use community link roads as dumping sites for accident cars.

The reason for doing that, the source explained, was to get rid of accident vehicles that were tainted with blood, so as to prevent children from coming into contact with them to avoid exposing them to both physical and psychological dangers.

When Today contacted the Motor Traffic Transport Unit (MTTU) Commander at the Amasaman Police station, Assistant Superintendent of Police (ASP) Amoako Boansi, he said, even though the station has a garage at Sowutuom, the urgency of some cases sometimes compelled the police to leave the damaged cars in the yard for testing.

Responding to why some of the vehicles had been there for years, ASP Boansi said, “Some drivers intentionally abandon their vehicles for fear of being prosecuted for engaging in acts of lawlessness.”

Sometimes, he added, an accident vehicle could be abandoned at the station, when a driver dies through an accident and no one comes for the vehicle.

He was, however, quick to add that, “from time to time the police do public announcements and sometimes relatives of victims come to collect some of the vehicles, especially those that are not too damaged beyond repairs.

For his part, the MTTU commander at the Accra Central Police Station, Assistant Commissioner of Police (ACP), Mr Fosu Ackaah, disclosed that some of the undamaged vehicles were retrieved from thieves and reckless drivers around town.