Is it ignorance: How evidence is contaminated by law enforcers?

On at least two occasions I have been on a public bus on the Techiman-Kumasi highway to have experienced sporadic searching by the police patrol. In one of such searches, marijuana was found in the bag of one of the passengers I was sharing the front seat with. It only took God’s favour for the person to own up for the bag else with the news about Nsawkaw being synonymous with “wee”, no amount of words would have exonerated their royal from the clutches of the law against “possessing narcotics”.

In one of such searches experienced, I had the concern to advise the police officers to beware of how they open people’s bags to conduct their search using bear hands. What if you leave prints one substantial evidence that you might pick up? So I told them after the search to use at least gloves anytime they had to embark on such exercises. To my surprise, the one I spoke to admitted unarguably.

In a recent video of suspected armed robbers on parade by the police that I chanced upon, the security agents are seeing touching and holding the retrieved armoury from the hideout of the suspected robbers. The said video was about arrested suspected armed robbers who attacked people at Alabar in Kumasi and the armoury discovered. From the manner in which the law enforcers handled the evidence, some people wrote comments as captured below with minimal edits;

“See how they contaminating the evidence, touching everything barehanded. Later the court will deny entering these as material evidence. They could walk free. Who trains these guys?”

“Their instructors should include ‘CSI Miami ‘ as a core module”

“… but this is outrageous. How can you mishandle evidence like this? Is like they don’t know anything at all on preserving evidence. If I am a judge and there on single fingerprint form a police officer on any of these items, they will be thrown out of court.”

I had similar concerns after watching the video and from my previous experience with the police during the highway search. If we continue to contaminate evidence, the efforts of government and the citizenry will always amount to nothing in making sure culprits or suspects are brought to book and punished as the evidence will present.

Our law enforcers must be professionals in handling suspects and evidence that come to their possession. The rush to take pictures and videos for social media must be controlled. It is in our own interest to preserve whatever evidence we discover.

It is true that they may be acting out of ignorance. It is therefore incumbent on the trainers of our law enforcers to make sure they bring them up to the task. People are becoming sophisticated with crime and the state must equally match. It can never be done if we do not encourage training in certain areas of forensics. Experts in this area might be few but that is the more reason why it must be part of the general training for all law enforcers especially those involved in our day-to-day affairs.

We must all be involved in combating crime and preserving evidence to point to the source is paramount. Citizens: beware!