In March 2012, twenty-one Police personnel of the Ghana Police Service (GPS) underwent a two-week training course on ‘Citizen Friendly Policing’ at the Police College in Accra. Born out of the cooperation between the German and Ghanaian governments and sponsored by the Hanns Seidel Foundation, this newly-launched program aims to rebuild and strengthen the trust of citizens in the Police. Importance is placed on soft skills that in the long run will lead to a change of the authoritarian attitude of state personnel to placing the citizenry at the center of law enforcement activities. The training courses include: Democratic Policing, Police Organizational Culture, Client Care, Problem-Solving Policing, Investigating Sexual and Gender-Based Violence and Election Security and Monitoring. Soft skills are not yet recognized as an essential part of the standard police training. HSF hopes that this initiative helps make aware of the usefulness and necessity of close police-citizenry collaboration.

Article “Police undergo Citizen-Friendly Training” in The Ghanaian Chronicle: http://ghanaian-chronicle.com/police-undergo-citizen-friendly-training/