The Police have always maintained that they are apolitical but this has always been lip service as they have never been in all their history .This is how they are supposed to be based on their Mission Statement which organizations generally present to their clients as their pledge.
Apart from these the appointments of Inspector Generals of Police and their deputies is also followed by oath taking before the President of the Republic and on such occasions a pledge is also made by swearing an oath to serve and direct the force diligently in an apolitical and diligent manner.
For the Sierra Leone Police, all these actions and commitments are done in futility as the force has always continued to exhibit tendencies that are far from these commitments to serve with all intent in a non partisan manner. Over the years since the post war restructuring the leadership of the organization has continuously mortgaged the professionalism and independency of the force for the selfish interest of maintaining their jobs.
When the APC was in power the Police put up a lot of very unprofessional tendencies such as the very unprofessional and provoking incident in which they sent their personnel to raid and search the tally center of the then flag bearer of the SLPP on the flimsy excuse that they suspected that they (SLPP) had set up a system that would hack NEC’s system.
This was viewed as very embarrassing in the face of the many international observers who were in the country to observe the elections. I could vividly remember John Mahama, leader of the Commonwealth Delegation who immediately went to the scene to mediate stating in a press conference that the action of the Police was tantamount to provocation and could have been managed more responsibly .The EU/OM in their final report on the march elections bashed the Police for a number of anomalies ranging from their poorly explained and executed vehicle restriction ban on elections day, to the rampant arrest and over detention of NEC personnel before the runoff elections on orders from above .
Police neutrality was consistently questioned by the observers and it was clear to all of them that a ban on vehicle movement on election day was a violation of the rights of the people to participate freely in the process Their spokesman Samura who has very little knowledge on comparative policing principles across the globe continued to present vague arguments against the ban all in the quest to please his political masters.
The actions of the Police on all of these issues justified the earlier position of the then SLPP flag bearer who had constantly insisted in a number of letters to the National Electoral Commission that he did not trust the Police. He vented out a number of activities that the Police had engaged in during the 2012 elections that gave the ruling party an edge over opposition parties.
He had, among other things, accused the Police of giving uniforms to ruling party thugs to conduct over voting and superintend massive intimidation of opposition supporters in the 2012 elections . For these reasons he had requested NEC to ensure that the Forces vote on a special day, developing a special voter register for Police personnel on patrols and giving special identification tags to all Police Personnel and lastly ensure that they only vote where they had registered .
The SLPP former flag bearer had also called on the new Police leadership at the time after the former Inspector General ,Francis Alieu Munu was coincidentally sacked after his controversial statement that the Police is not idle to provide security for Lahai Lawrence Leema who the Police had invited to the CID after his actions at the SLBC. In that meeting, Bio had appealed to the new Police Inspector General and his team to remain apolitical in the 2018 elections. Well it is normally said that new brooms sweep clean as the Moigbeh-Al-sheikh cabal was very confident and in high spirits that they would move away from the old order and provide Policing services that would befit a professional force. As I write today posterity will judge them on whether they did exactly what they promised the then flag bearer.
In the New Direction, the President had met the Police on two occasions since his election victory, first at the Kingtom Police field and the second at the Police passing –out Hastings . He did not mince his words to point out that he would fully support the Police to a professional height if they remain apolitical.
But alas they have still continued to behave otherwise and this brings me to the disgraceful action a few days ago by abruptly removing assigned security men from the then APC flag bearer Samura Kamara .It is no secret that this gentleman lives in a terrain (Sheriff Drive, Juba and it environs) that has remained very volatile after the elections. The factors are that the area which used to be an APC area was infiltrated by the SLPP in the 2018 elections leading to Honourable Tawah winning as the SLPP MP. Very recently an APC supporter was mysteriously killed in the area. So all these instances would have guided a very responsible Police organization to think that it is not timely to remove security guards from the then APC flag bearer Samura Kamara for all the reasons stated above.
The excuse of Al-Sheikh Kamara, the Deputy Inspector General of Police that the Police is withdrawing all their security personnel as they are over stretched is very shameful as many Sierra Leoneans know that the Police had continued to provide a number of business houses and foreign Lebanese individuals with armed guards on commercial basis.
The ranting of former Police Spokesman Ibrahim Samura that Samura Kamara does not fall in the category of persons who should be provided with close protection security was even worse. He should by now understand that even though the Police has categories of people they constantly provide security for, certain situations have arisen wherein the lives of certain individuals not in such categories are under threat and the Police is forced to provide security for such people and Samura Kamara squarely falls in this category for now based on the instances I have stated above.
But what is very clear is that the Moigbeh-Al-Sheikh cabal at has outlived their usefulness at Police headquarters. Candidly enough they would not do anything that will impress President Bio to continue to keep them at Police headquarters.
Whatever they will do now including what they did to Samura will just continue to expose their partisan nature a language which the SLPP understands better as Leema and others who are in charge of the Police now have faced the music on a number of times at the hands of the Police.