The SLP should be objectively serving the nation by carrying out orders and enforcing the law dispassionately.
One of the major functions of the SLP is to save lives and property and professionally serve the public in the spirit of Unity, Freedom and Justice, not just the ruling Sierra Leone People’s Party and the government of the day as it has always been. That style of policing needs to be changed and reform the national force into a professional democratic policing service.
Forum Newspaper observes that closed to twenty-three years now the SLP has been metamorphosing itself into a manipulative force of both incumbent previous and present government, to abuse the rights and freedoms of civilians they are expected to be protecting. Such is not peace at all, and does not in any way consolidate our democracy nor sustain our heard earned peace.
Politically trumped cases involving opposition members, being handled by the SLP in support of incumbency, are creating insecurity to lives and property. It is therefore the responsibility of the SLP to create sanity in the absence of malice, charge and prosecute suspects without fair or favour, even though some of the charges are mostly misdirected without weight in the court of law.
Sierra Leone owns the police institution as a national force, and it is the responsibility of the SLP to defend the state.
The government can rule the state when given the authority by the people to do so, through the ballot box in an impartial electioneering conducts. Therefore, such a government becomes the government of the state and not the government of any political party as it is now in the present state of affairs.
The political scenario has made the SLP becomes unprofessionally subjective to the dictates of government. Though the IGP is appointed by the president and approved by parliament, it does not means that the police should be blind to professional policing. Nonetheless ties between the SLP and executive arm of the SLPP government make IGP Sovula more submissive to the dictates of the presidency and the entire regime in the unethical cloak of serving the orders of the day.
The prosecutions of cases of high political magnitude are unprofessionally done by the police in consonant with the judiciary.
Sierra Leone needs a police force that won’t be easily manipulated by a government of the day and one that shouldn’t be also seen as forces protecting government’s interest but the interest of the people.
Peaceful demonstrations are inevitable! And when properly managed by the police everywhere on earth, they most times produced the needed outcomes even in advance democracies. In this direction, the police should not be used to stop peaceful protests, which formed key parts of the democratic expressions of grievances to authorities, especially when certain groups of people feel not fairly treated by the systems and want to express their feelings to the authorities in a peaceful manner.
…The SLP should be seeing adequately controlling protesters as protests are part of their democratic rights to work within legal framework of the law. When demonstrations and protests are adequately controlled, supervised by the police there is no incident of attraction.
Protecting government interests by stopping demonstration, seeking police clearance is uncalled for. Equally, the police should provide the necessary security in every protest to ensure the security of lives and property. The police should not deter the people from protest. If the government is by the people, of the people and for the people, then the people have the rights to criticize the government’s excess. It is the test of our democracy.
Government cannot take the responsibility for all the good and the bad of the nation. Engaging the people in terms of demonstration allows the government to see and to know the other part of public perceptions. When this is done, then the government and the people can sit together to address the appalling situation.
The police are always ‘trigger happy’. They want to show the use of the barrel against harmless civilians, bringing them into submission. The police are not only there to provide security for the government but to the state which includes all individuals irrespective of socioeconomic and political status.
The police are answerable to the state including the government and the governed. Everyman is equal before the law regardless of one’s political affiliations. Therefore, in the exhibition of its responsibility, the police should know their obligations to the people and the government. They should not be only seeking government interests but the interest of everybody.
Security is paramount we all know. Security does not necessarily mean the silent of guns but formidable structures for the sustenance of permanent peace. Any threat to security is insecurity. And the proliferations of firearms are threats to peace and stability. A threat to food security is also insecurity to agricultural productivity, and any threat to our health is insecurity. Overall, the police is there to support every measure put forward by the government to stop any form of these threats.
Covid-19 is here, and we need the required police security to combat the threat. We were asked by the government to put on face mask as one of the measures to combat the Covid-19 threat.
The police is there to ensure the compliance of the people. In such a situation the police is required to be helping government and the people from the Covid-19 pandemic. These are some of the expectations of security consciousness that should be aptly exhibited by the police.
The police is serving the government and the people. The government should not unfairly direct the police to satisfy political egos of incumbency. The system should live the police to perform their duties without interferences. The neutrality of the police force depends on the avoidance to be misdirected by the government. When the police is free from political intimidation, threat, they are composed to do the right things as a national force. They should be given the fullest cooperation to perform their duties.
The governments come and go the police always remain as a national force. Individuals of the force can be made to retire, sack or dismiss as and when fit, but the force always remains the same.
Politics or not, the police force is a national institutions on its own. The president can appoint the head and the deputy of the institution but should have no right to dictate to them on what should be done.
Cases of political interest should not be the focus of the police. It is an independent institution with the proclivity to address issues of national concerns. The police needs to be vigilant in the prosecution and prevention of crime in the attainment of the nomenclature as a national force for good. The impartiality of the police in the prosecution of crime is relevant to their responsibilities.
