I love watching cop shows, The Bill, CSI, they don’t rest until they get results.

Ghana police are the complete opposite. After the break in I had to drive down to the police station with the duty security guard in tow. I wrote my statement and in it I wrote down that I suspected that it must be someone in the area. The response from the officer “why do you people always think it is someone in the area, normally it is someone from outside”. I say nothing, he knows best.

I then have to drive the officer to my house, he looks around but I don’t actually see the point in his visit because he didn’t really do much or say much and then tells me that someone will be there in the morning to take the finger prints (to match them against which database only God knows as I don’t think they are that advanced yet).

The next day I wait, and I wait, and I wait it gets to about 1pm and I decide to go and go to the office to send some emails. In the meantime, the police have my number but are yet to call. I get to the office where a colleague says that her friends father is the Commisioner so she makes a call to tell him that nothing has been done about my case. He says he will follow up on this.

The next day I get a call from the chief officer at East Legon police station asking me to come in. I thought there was a lead on the case, he rather called me in to berate me for calling his boss and to tell me that next time I should come to the police station and follow up (because they were so helpful). They call the forensic guy who comes down. Apparently there had been a kidnapping case the day before which took up all of their time. However they missed the point about the forensic guy not calling until the afternoon, and nobody calling me to tell me what’s going on, but I keep calm afterall they are the police and I am at their mercy.

The forensic guy comes to the house, he wanted me to take him there and bring him back but I was travelling to Kumasi that day and really he had a car I thought it was a bit of a cheek. He got their took some fingerprints and tells me that they will match it against the file they have at the station but if I have any suspects I should let them know (I guess I should investigate the case as well while I’m at it). He then says to me I should give him something for fuel…bloody cheek…but this is Africa, people are always looking for extra hand outs for work they are paid to do. I reiterated the point that the thieves had made off with my money but I gave him some evaporated milk that I had got free from the company.

Since then nothing, I don’t think anyone has been questioned and unless I go to the station myself or find the culprits myself, I might as well forget.

It’s not easy oo