More training in the pipeline for police investigators

By JACKLYN SIRIAS
THE National Capital District police command is looking at a long-term approach to solve the issue of police cases being thrown out of court due to insufficient evidence or incomplete files.
NCD Metropolitan Superintendent Perou N’Dranou said following concerns raised by district court magistrates that many police cases were dismissed after three months because police failed to complete investigations and provide evidence.
“I am also concerned just as the courts because we do not have a short-term solution to this issue,” he said.
N’Dranou said they had set up a discussion session in which they would be provided assistance by the Public Prosecutor’s Office to find ways to address the issue.
“Secondly, we have an investigators’ training being conducted at police college in Bomana currently to educate our police officers on the importance of investigating cases and providing evidence to court,” he said.
He was looking at more training so that individual officers could learn and improve their investigating skills.
“One of my other plans is to introduce a database system that can assist police to have easy access to information everywhere in all police stations to enable them to work on individual cases so the system will help to promote their effort to complete files quickly.”
N’Dranou said that was also a long-term plan but it would cost money so his office was still looking for funding to get the database system established.
He said the outcomes of the approaches would not be seen quickly.