Urban crime wave beating police

They have survived a decade and a half of war, but now residents of Liberia’s capital Monrovia face a new threat of rising violent crime by gangs armed with guns and machetes.

In a horror scene reminiscent of Liberia’s bloody civil war, Monrovia residents last week awoke to find a chopped corpse lying in a pool of blood in the city centre. Meanwhile the cheap, durable and lethal AK-47s, used by thousands of fighters in the war years, are now regularly being used in armed robberies.

“This country has turned away from the days of war and we have now found ourselves in another period of terror by criminals,” said Dan Deshield a resident of the Duala area of Monrovia, one of the war-battered city’s poorest residential suburbs.

Rebel and pro-government fighters, sometimes clad in ball gowns and wigs, terrorised Liberians for 14 years following the break out of war in 1989. Leaders encouraged fighters to use their guns to loot and steal. Most of the country’s 3 million population ran from their homes in fear, and hundreds of thousands fled the country altogether.

Elections last year sealed Liberia’s return to peace. Refugees are being encouraged to return home and a massive reconstruction effort is in full swing.

As part of that renewal, a new police force is being trained, but the Liberian government has admitted that the new recruits can’t cope and has urged Monrovia residents to take the matter into their own hands.

“We wish to reiterate our earlier call on community dwellers, in the face of the police inability to decisively deal with the upsurge in criminal activities in the city, to organise themselves into community watch teams or vigilante groups in helping to protect themselves against these murderers who are bent on disrupting our hard-earned peace,” the Ministry of Justice said in statement issued on 2 September.

So far some 1,600 police have been trained out of a projected post-war force of 3,500, according to police officials. But so far, none of them are armed. Only the security forces that guard President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf are currently issued with weapons.

In mid-June the United Nations Security Council unanimously adopted a resolution easing a 1992 arms embargo on Liberia. That amendment vetoed the importation of weapons and ammunition to be used for training purposes and by members of the peacetime government, police and security forces.

Since war ended in 2003, the UN mission in Liberia (UNMIL) has been charged with providing security with a 15,000-strong force of international peacekeepers.

Head of that UN mission, Alan Doss, told reporters recently that UN police, in conjunction with their newly trained Liberian counterparts, have increased night patrols in Monrovia and introduced foot patrols to crack down on crime.

President Sirleaf, known as the Iron Lady for her no-nonsense style, has asked the UN force to get tough and advised Monrovia residents to stay out of their way.

“We have now asked UNMIL to be a bit more aggressive, work with the police force to increase patrolling at nights. We also suggested to them that those found in groups – gangs after midnight – be stopped and if they are ganging up, they should be arrested,” she said.

“We are asking people to stay off the streets at night so that they are not subjected to police actions.”

Residents like Richelieu Walker, scurrying home from his job as a physician’s assistant, is only to happy to heed Sirleaf’s request.

“I have a life to live,” he said. “I will not stand still in the street for those criminals to kill me!”

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