I AM POLICE INFORMANT, WITNESS TELLS COURT

A police informant, Michael Obeng Ntim, who testified as the second prosecution witness in the case in which Constable Ekow Russel of the Accra Regional Police and Maxwell Antwi, a car dealer, are being tried for narcotic offences, yesterday denied that he blew the whistle because he was not offered any reward by Russel.
Testifying under cross-examination by Captain Nkrabeah Effah-Dartey (Rtd), counsel for Constable Russel, the witness said he had been a police informant and in the past he had been rewarded for giving information on narcotic suspects.
"I went to the Accra Regional Police Headquarters for my reward but I reported the matter not because I was not given any reward," he said.
Constable Russel is facing three counts of possession of narcotic drugs, supply of narcotic drugs and dealing in prohibited business relating to narcotic drugs, while his civilian accomplice faces one count of possession of narcotic drugs without authority.
Constable Russel is also said to have admitted the offence and stated that the cocaine had been taken from certain Nigerian dealers in Tema on January 16, 2007.
The policeman is said to have led a team to effect the arrest of the Nigerians, Sebastian Uba and Matthew Nkumado, during which eight slabs of the substance were seized but he delivered only one slab to the office to make a case against them.
On January 31, 2007, Uba mysteriously escaped from Constable Russel when he had been instructed to send the Nigerian from the La Police Station to the Regional Police Headquarters.
According to Ntim, three days after the operation on January 15, 2007, he went to the Accra Regional Police Headquarters when Russel was not telling him anything about the reward.
He said when he told Russel that he expected some form of reward after giving the information, Russell told him that he had handed the case to his superior officer, Inspector Oppong, and that the suspects were in custody.
Ntim said that while he wanted to be rewarded for the information he gave to Constable Russel, he became an informant in order to rid the country of cocaine dealers to give boost to the crusade against narcotic drugs.
"I know that the country is crusading against cocaine, therefore, when I received the report that some Nigerian were dealing in the substance, I felt it wise to report to the police.”
When Captain Effah-Dartey put it to the witness that he was not patriotic because he depended on giving information to the police for a living, he replied in the negative and stated that as to whether he would be given a reward was a secondary matter.
He said when in the first instance he gave information to the police about some narcotic suspects who eventually ran away, he received two shirts as a reward and maintained that it was not for the reward that he did that but his duty as a citizen to flush out cocaine dealers from the system.
"I did not receive cash rewards for the previous information," Ntim said when counsel put to him that he was not being truthful to the court because he was given cash reward.
Asked how he got to be acquainted to Constable Russel, the witness said he got to know him after they had met at Abeka Lapaz in Accra and stated that he had never given information to the accused person in the past.
He said that he called the accused person to inform him about the activities of the cocaine dealers because he knew Constable Russel to be diligent with his work when it came to arresting suspects.
The witness, however, said he could not vouch for the character of the accused person.
When counsel asked Ntim why he did not call the CID to give them the information, he said that he did not do that because personnel from the CID tended to delay in taking action on information, therefore, he called Constable Russel who was with the Rapid Response Unit of the police.
Ntim said apart from Constable Russel and a driver who were in mufti, all the policemen who accompanied them to Tema to arrest the cocaine dealers were in uniform and nobody was introduced to him by the accused person.
He said he was able to know that they were policemen because of their uniform.
Ntim further maintained that when they were returning to Accra from Tema, their car stopped along the way and Constable Russel gave one slab each of the cocaine to two persons he named as Capito and Alhaji and three slabs to some Nigerians while he (Russel) also took three away.
Counsel suggested to the witness that he was not being truthful because as a patriotic citizen he would not have looked on while the accused persons distributed the cocaine and to that he responded that while the accused person was armed, he also spoke Hausa with the others.
In a follow-up question as to why he did not report when he realised that Constable Russel distributed the cocaine, Ntim said he did not know the reason for which the cocaine was shared and even if he had done so, the accused person would have gone with all the cocaine and there was nothing with which he could substantiate his report.