As representative of state authority, the Sierra Leone Police is one of the governance agencies that received huge support from development partners immediately after the civil war.
Support range from capacity and human resource development through knowledge exchange abroad to logistical and materials boost that facilitated police operations nationwide. All in furtherance to reconstruct damages caused to police infrastructure nationwide during the conflict, those among other valuable support to the SLP should have been sustained through good leaderships of the force since then to date, which didn’t happen.
Nonetheless, due to the culture of poor handling of government work and property, those gains went down the drains under the watch of previous police leaders. In the persons of the late Inspector General of Police, Brima Acha Kamara, Richard Moigbeh and even Ambrose Michael Sovula of recent times couldn’t upkeep the legacies he inherited from his immediate predecessors.
What a week and an incompetent police leadership?
Established by the British colonial administration, through a Royal Gazette in 1894, the Sierra Leone Police has gone through several layers of transformations.
The SLP, under the leadership of IGP William Fayia Sellue, is expected to perform its duties professionally as a democratic police, because he is well equipped with the required institutional memory of several reforms the system had gone through.
And with the trending state of affairs in the SLP, the lost glory of the police needs to be restored through standards, respectability and professionalism bequeath personnel. Police morals should not have been eroded immediately after the exit of the veteran London Metropolitan police chief, former IGP, Keith Biddle. Since the departure of ex-IGP Biddle the SLP has been battling with the challenges of professionalism, morals, and credibility in all aspects of conventional policing. These should be brought to permanent halt which is why IGP Sellu is up with a new beginning in the police. His is a move from a force to service, what would soon be called the SIERRA LEONE POLICE SERVICE- SLPS.
That is why in what appears to be a strategic leadership moves towards rebranding the service IGP Sellu whiles addressing a series of cross cutting issues affecting the moral, conduct and reputation of personnel of the elite force, ahead of the proposed reform, issued a stern warning cautioning personnel to reform their conduct in line with the emerging changes.
Addressing senior management officers, including Divisional Traffic Officers-DTOs during a gathering held at the Kingtom Police Mess last Saturday 17 August, 2024, Sellu underscores the significance of professionalism in the performance of police duties.
He pointed out the need for reforms in the attitudinal behaviours patterns of police personnel. Also as part of his reforms and transformational message to police officers across the country ahead of what would soon looked like a new era in policing in Sierra Leone, Sellu reiterated the importance of capacity development by police personnel to catch up with emerging development in the would-be SLPS.
In the areas of handling, monitoring offences and the issuance of witnesses with caution where necessary, the IGP who seems to be fully abreast with flaws in aspect of police operation duties charged that personnel must conduct themselves professionally while on duty and especially when in uniforms.
Observers opined that the SLPP is confronted with ethical, professional challenges due to the deliberate failures of certain senior police commanders at the top who are reneging of their responsibilities. Other schools of thoughts hold the views that unprofessionalism in the police is condoned by past and present leaderships, that is why it has become norms in the force.
And both opinions welcome and transformation trajectory and strongly back the reform move by IGP Sellu.
Police transformation is certainly good news to ears of all and sundry, though IGP Sellu in his random reforms message to personnel didn’t caution them about the professional aspect of handling protesters, crowd control, rioters, brutality, arbitrary arrest and detention and other human right violations. Police brutality such as release of lethal weapons at vulnerable people among other human rights abuses by the SLP have in recent past dented the hard earned reputation of the Sierra Leone Police under his watch and his immediate predecessors, Ambrose Michael Sovula. All of which should be a things of the past come the much anticipated reform of the police.
For the records, Mr IGP unprofessionalism is not only spotted in the area of traffic policing management which this page won’t delve into detail at all because of one reason or the other. But everybody knows very well what happen on the roads where police personnel are deployed to control and manage traffic.
To the broad topic, cuts unprofessionalism across. Ethical issues are at every police installations, even under the feet of the Inspector General of Police on George Street unprofessional and unethical challenges are spotted there. Therefore the discussion and debate about the much needed transformation of the police should be open-ended with public inputs of ideas on the way forward on how every Sierra Leonean would like to see personnel of the Sierra Leone Police in the nearest future. The more the reason meetings of such natures should be quickly cascaded to the lowest police installation in the country to inform personnel that its indeed no more business as usual and that the era of misconduct with impunity is fast gone. And to also tell them that now is the period of the transformation of the Sierra Leone Police from that of a force to the SERVE… that there will soon be a SIERRA LEONE POLICE SERVICE -SLPS.
But again where is Mr IGP Sellu leaving the ‘Force For Good’ slogan in the wake of this all important transformation of the police? A news that has been received with extraordinary expectations of high level of professional standards, considering the roles that have been played by the Sierra Leone Police on peacekeeping missions in different parts of the world. These professionalisms are also expected to be brought home for national benefits and value for money.
Moreover, reform of the police should not be narrowed down to traffic management, if only we are to meet trending global professional policing standards.
So of whichever reforms that are coming into the system they should be holistic. It should capture all aspects of the system, ensuring that personnel benefits from whatever is on the table for the would-be SLPS. Be it discipline, capacity development and upgrade of conditions of service of personnel etc. should capture personnel everywhere.
Besides moving from a force to that of a service, the changes must come along with brand new policing standards of operations wherein police service should be made available to all and sundry, and not just the traditional paymaster who feeds the police from taxpayers’ money. Policing in the new era should be strategically positioned as a service provider, always ready to deliver on its mandates in record time as demands by the laws of the country. Also in the new era, police should be able to deliver a good relationship between communities of operations by way of serving as people’s police this time around as the case may be in other neighbouring countries. By this it requires the would-be police service to change its human rights narratives, to better records worthy of emulation and to be proud of. The reason being that the last 5 to 6 years records of the police in Sierra Leone are not good for the reputation of the police, which is also where professionalism is required to be fully injected in the continuing reform of the police from a force to that of a service with a sound and impressive human rights performance moving forward, while praying in our diverse religious denominations for a police transformation for the better and the general good!
