By Isaac Massaquoi
Armed robbers are on the prowl again. They may not have reached your home yet – and I pray they never do – but those of us who’ve heard the story of people who were recently woken up at 3:00am to find a dozen criminals armed with all types of weapons inside their bedrooms, beating and demanding money and jewelry from them have been left severely traumatized.
The robbers are becoming increasingly bold and mobile. They cover a wide area within a few hours, conduct their raids on soft targets with very little or no regard for the police.
How else can we explain this: About two dozen armed robbers attacked Catholic facilities in Bumbuna and Lunsar and before the nation could read a news release on the issue put out by the Catholic Church, the same criminals were attacking another set of church people and road construction workers in the southern district of Moyamba. And with all the police checkpoints on the road and the “robust” patrols we hear about, the robbers appear to have traveled across the country and conducted these raids with ease.
The audio making the rounds on social media on the Moyamba attack is blood-cuddling. I am still thinking about how these young men – from what I know they were all men – set up their gang and secured their deadly weapons and other logistics. The sheer organization and coordination that made it possible for this group to hitherto continue hitting the north and south of the country within hours only to be captured by ordinary local vigilantes mobilized by the Chairman of the Moyamba District Council.
THE SIERRA LEONE POLICE
It’s a fact that when we travel on the roads the last thing we want is for a police officer to stop our vehicle at a checkpoint and insist on doing a thorough check. We complain about time and all that. That may well be the reason why at major checkpoints like Mile 38, people in private vehicles and Sierra Leone Road Transport buses are almost always waved through while passengers in commercial vehicles are made to walk through the checkpoint, reminiscent of the Ebola days, and their vehicles checked inside out. So nothing stops the armed robbers from renting or stealing a private car to ease their movement through checkpoints. In fact what’s the point of setting up a checkpoint that operates a two-tier check system in which some kinds of vehicles and passengers are cleared without question while the others are subjected to the rules of search.
The officers at these checkpoints must do their job properly and stop this habit of asking totally irrelevant questions and referring to everyone in a private car as the big man, while expecting something for the boys. When one of them went close to doing a proper check on a private vehicle I was travelling in recently, he spent all his time asking us for ID cards. The only form of identification papers we had on us was our driver’s licenses. He didn’t look too impressed with that so he asked for passports. We told him we were all Sierra Leoneans going to Makeni so we didn’t need a passport. Then he wanted to know what we were going to do in Makeni. At that point we told him he was overstepping his power and he should allow us to proceed. He did.
There’s no doubt that their job is a really difficult one, for while we sleep at night we expect them to be out there confronting some of the most nasty people around including this latest batch, most of whom are repeat offenders whom the judiciary has clearly failed to put away for a very long time. There’s also no doubt that they need all the logistics they require to conduct operations and those on the other end of the criminal justice scale, particularly the judiciary should play their part well and society must help the police when required.
In the Moyamba incident, all telephone lines to the police station and to individual police officers were down on the day of that attack so that the victims had to call the political head of the district for help, who in turn mobilized vigilantes to arrest the criminals and hand them over to the police. So here’s the question: how prepared are the emergency services, the police in particular to receive and deal with distress calls? According to the audio, it was completely impossible to get the police when they were badly needed. The nuns in Bumbuna and Lunsar might have had the same experience.
As we move into the rainy season armed robbery incidents multiply. In some communities the fear of crime is so pervasive that people are beginning to curtail some of their freedoms just to be safe. On my way to the stadium recently to watch a football match we passed by a popular hangout to greet some friends and as we drove out one of them cautioned us to leave the car behind and do the 10-minute walk to the stadium because, he said, that was better than criminals breaking into the car.
We assured him that we would be fine but he insisted, saying that during the Independence Day festival more than two dozen cars were broken into inside the stadium. My mind went back to a similar incident that had happened to someone close to me who parked a car close to Choithram Supermarket on the Sanders street end, and dashed for some quick transaction in one of the shops around, only to return after ten minute to find the car doors open and a bag containing money and jewelry stolen. The matter was reported to nearby Adelaide Street police station where they were dealing with a similar incident on Campbell Street the night before. Anyway we came back from the stadium unscathed.
These days ask people in Bo about the activities of these criminals on their streets and you will get the sense of how much the fear of crime has affected the beautiful night life that Bo is particularly known for. I recently witnessed an incident at a guest house in Bo that has remained with me since that Friday evening. A young woman, about 20 years, with food in hand obviously for one of the guests inside, alighted from a motorcycle. She asked me to help her deliver the food to a guest. I pointed to a small guard post where she could get help. Just then one of the guards stepped out to attend to the woman and offered to lead her to the guest. The lady refused. I was as shocked as the guard was embarrassed.
I accompanied the lady to an expectant burly old man who looked truly famished. During that short walk I slipped in a question or two as to why she behaved the way she did at the gate. She told me the guard was a member of a dangerous clique in Bo town who was released early from a one-year prison sentence for gang-related activities. She said his group once attacked her and her friends, stealing money and mobile phones and attempting to rape one of them before two men on a passing motorbike rescued them after being attracted to them by their cries.
I would ask the guard several questions over the next 48 hours I spent in the guesthouse with the aim of confirming the lady’s accusation. At some point, the guard became angry about me asking him so many questions and stopped cooperating. I left that guesthouse convinced the young lady was right. So how did a man with such a criminal past find his way into that kind of job?
We should never allow ourselves to be lured into a false sense of security, believing that help is just around the corner in case we or our neighbours are under attack by armed men. We need police officers patrolling our streets even in broad daylight, those robust patrols must be seen in our communities, emergency telephone lines must work at all times and when found guilty criminals must be put away for a very long time.
(c) 2019 Politico Online
