UN police chief outlines plans to revive Liberian force

Mark Kroeker, the commander of a United Nations police force charged with totally revamping Liberia's discredited law enforcement agencies, said on Wednesday he would conduct a comprehensive assessment of the country's policing needs before deciding how to proceed. Speaking to the media for the first time since his arrival on Sunday, Kroeker said his 1,115-strong force of UN policemen would bring about a "restructuring" and a "transformation" of Liberia's police force. But he declined to comment directly on remarks last week by Jacques Klein, the head of the United Nations Mission to Liberia (UNMIL), that the existing force of 3,500 to 4,000 police would be demobilised so that an entirely new force could be recruited and trained from scratch. "We intend to first of all conduct a clear assessment of the local police situation," the 59-year-old UN police chief from Portland, Oregon, said. "We will send our officers out to discover the precise situation. This will happen very quickly - in the next weeks," he added. Kroeker served for 32 years in the Los Angeles Police Department in California before being appointed deputy commissioner of operations of the 2,200 UN International Police Task Force in Bosnia and Herzegovina. He arrived in Liberia with 10 officers from Bangladesh, Jordan, Norway and Turkey. Kroeker said there would be 100 UN policemen in Liberia by the end of this year and the force should reach its full strength of more than 1,000 men by June 2004. But he stressed that the role of the UN police would be to train and develop a revitalised local police force, not to take over full responsibility for day-to-day policing. "Our role is not to be the [Liberian] police, but to develop the Liberian police and provide the support necessary to build a resourceful, fully functional service - national in scope, community-based, with sound leadership," he said. "We intend to deploy our officers to be visible, co-located with Liberian police officers as we build and equip the new force. They will be there to mentor, develop and train, almost like consultants to the local police," Kroeker said. The UN police will serve alongside 15,000 UN peacekeeping troops in Liberia to restore law and order in a country ravaged by 14 years of war. Local human rights activists said the Liberian police was corrupt and had committed rampant human rights abuses during the government of former President Charles Taylor. Taylor was elected head of state in 1997, but resigned under massive international pressure on 11 August and went into exile in Nigeria. A peace agreement to end the civil war was signed two weeks later and a broad-based transitional government, led by businessman Gyude Bryant, took office on 14 October to guide Liberia to fresh elections in 2005.