Vigilante gangs patrol streets as police force rebuilds

Every night Gibson Karchold and his neighbours pick up their machetes and nail-studded sticks and go out on patrol, trying to protect their homes in a run-down area of the Liberian capital, Monrovia. “Criminals come around to hijack you while you are in bed. They take your generator and then wake you up and take your mattress,” explained the 31-year-old, a construction worker by day and vigilante by night. Residents support his group, providing food and water to see them through until the watch ends just before dawn. “It’s really the police’s job,” the diminutive Liberian told IRIN. “But you could be killed before the police arrive. They are far away from where the action is.” After more than two years of peace in Liberia, worries about war have given way to concerns about crime. “You have a lot of people accustomed to violence and nothing to preoccupy their minds… and the country is awash with small arms,” said Peter Zaizay, a spokesman for the Liberian National Police. “Armed robberies have increased to some extent.” In response, vigilante gangs have sprung up around the capital and the trend is worrying those in the upper echelons of the United Nations, which has some 15,000 troops and 1,000 policemen charged with helping keep the peace in Liberia. “A troubling development is the formation of vigilante groups by some Liberians,” UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan said in his most recent report on the West African nation. However, some officials on the ground in Liberia, who requested anonymity, said that the impromptu patrols might help cut the crime rate. “Hoodlums capitalise on the fact that everyone stays indoors. Now the vigilantes are out there. They know their community. It’s not a solution to the problem but they are helping,” one official said. Working by moonlight Accompanying the police on a Saturday night patrol, an IRIN correspondent saw vigilante groups working by the light of the full moon or torches in several areas of the city, which has no mains electricity and thus no street lights. “We had an armed robber round here who killed one person and wounded three others. It got so desperate we decided to keep watch to save one another,” said Francis Jallah, a telephone technician-turned vigilante in the so-called GSA neighbourhood. Down the road in Jacob’s Town, another group had cornered a suspected robber. They held him more than half an hour – the time it took police to reach the remote area, bumping down kilometres of dirt track, flooded after a heavy downpour.

Even the beach shacks have barbed wire in Monrovia

This suspect was handed over, unharmed, and taken to the local police station. But there have been other instances, where no such restraint has been shown. The body of Magic D, described by locals as a notorious armed robber, lay on a rubbish dump in the Fiamah neighbourhood for days after residents tired of his repeated offences and took matters into their own hands, beating him to death. “Magic fought for former president Charles Taylor during the war,” said 19-year-old Moses Maldinho, a former schoolmate. “After the war, he stole because of poverty. He wanted a cool life and didn’t want to wait.” Some say that vigilantes are proof of the lack of trust in the forces of law and order, a hang over from the civil war when officers were not only corrupt but also involved in human rights abuses. “There’s a lack of confidence in the justice system. That’s really the problem,” said police spokesman, Zaizay. “That’s why we have the community policing strategy, to increase awareness and share information.” The peace accord that brought Liberia’s civil war to an end in August 2003 called for the police force to be restructured, with the old force demobilised, and new recruits trained by the United Nations. Some way to go Two years later, around 1,600 trained police officers are on the streets of Liberia, just under half of the UN target. “Considerable progress has been made but there’s a way to go yet,” said Alan Doss, head of the UN Mission in Liberia (UNMIL). “Between US $3 million and $4 million is still needed.” Some human rights experts have criticised how the new police force is being formed. “Problems in the vetting and removal of human rights abusers from the police force… and the lack of donor support to rebuild the decimated judicial infrastructure has undermined progress in establishing the rule of law,” Human Rights Watch, a New York-based group, said in a recent report. The Liberian police, themselves, have also admitted to some teething problems. At the beginning of the month, six officers, including a deputy inspector, were suspended after using tear gas against their superiors to protest their pay shortly after returning from special riot training in Nigeria. And equipment is still lacking. “The guns and cutlasses that the armed robbers carry sometimes scare the police who just have batons and handcuffs,” said police spokesman Zaizay. For the past month or so, local police have been backed up on their patrols by armed UN peacekeepers, and officers say this is giving them new authority to stem the tide of crime.

A Liberian policeman stands guard at a pre-election politial rally

But police vehicles are in short supply. There are only two outside Montserrado, the county that surrounds the capital, and these are in Maryland, home of the interim president. One Liberian, whose stolen mobile phone was tracked down by police last week, was asked to pay US $30 –- an average officer’s monthly salary -- to cover the petrol the patrol car used to retrieve it. Emergency service? Police trucks are plastered with stickers urging people to call 911, but residents complain they can never get through. At a recent media briefing, a senior police officer attempted to prove that there were six lines in operation. He called the emergency number and was connected immediately, but when another person tried, a busy signal rang out and the demonstration was quickly abandoned. This doesn’t surprise mother of six and Fiamah resident, Mama Gray. She laughs when asked if she has been burgled. “Of course,” she sighs, shaking her head. Cooking utensils and water carriers were considered sufficient booty to raid her corrugated-iron roofed home. Gray, like many Liberians, is hoping that the newly-elected government will provide an alternative to crime for thousands of ex-combatants by creating jobs. Her neighbour, Saye Kehinah, voices the same hopes. “The poverty rate is so high in this country and people have no jobs,” he told IRIN. “We want that to change. We need that to change.” For him, politics and crime, are inextricably linked. He couldn’t vote in last week’s landmark presidential and parliamentary elections, the first since the end of the civil war. “My wallet was stolen the other week with my voting card inside,” he said, with an air of resignation.