How IRT’s tractor was used for unofficial duties by… — Retired senior police officer

A retired senior police officer has alleged that the real-time tracking technological platform that once helped the Intelligence Response Team, IRT, to crack many criminal cases ended up being used for ‘unofficial duties’ by politicians.

The officer said this while responding to Vanguard’s question on what went wrong with the system put in place to monitor the locations of kidn@ppers and interception of calls for prompt arrest and rescue of abd¥cted victims.

Recall that the police launched intelligence-led policing in 2015 with the installation of a tracking device that was installed by the then-Inspector-General of Police office, Solomon Arase.

According to Vanguard, the retired officer said: “Solomon Arase set up the platform when he was the IGP. It was a technical platform to track calls. It was mounted in the IGP’s office then and only one officer, who is now an AIG, had access to the technical platform.

The Intelligence Response Team, IRT was supposed to be the operational wing that would work with the technical platform. When the technical team got information, it would pass it to IRT to go to the location and make an arrest. Drones and vehicles were bought for the operation.

But successive IGPs who were analogues didn’t know what to do. They merged the technical platform and IRT. Instead of the platform being used for crime prevention, it became political. People in the National Assembly and Villa got hold of the platform and used it to track their enemies and mistresses.

For such a platform, you don’t give both the technical and the operational units to just one person who would be compromised by politicians. That was the beginning of the collapse of the platform. It requires someone with power and intelligence; someone of a strategic level who is keen on that line. [Swipe]