By Alpha Amadu Jalloh
There is a covenant between the state and the citizen: the state creates and equips a police service so that ordinary people can live without fear to sleep, work and raise children knowing that their lives and property are protected. Our Constitution is clear that “the security, peace and welfare of the people of Sierra Leone shall be the primary purpose and responsibility of Government, and to this end it shall be the duty of the Armed Forces, the Police, Public Officers and all security agents to protect and safeguard the people of Sierra Leone.” (Constitution of the Republic of Sierra Leone, 1991, Chapter III).
“When policing becomes a handmaiden to politics, who protects the people?”
Our laws are also clear that the police exist to protect life and property and to enforce the law, not to pick political winners and losers. Indeed, the document of international human rights reminds us: “Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.” (Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 3).
Yet today the covenant is fraying. What we are witnessing is not merely incompetence; it is the dangerous politicisation of the Sierra Leone Police. It shows up in the selective enforcement of laws, in public officials who excuse criminal networks, in press statements that trivialise a national scourge, and in an Inspector General of Police who must answer for the obvious question: when policing becomes political, the people become the victims.
“The protector has become complicit, or at minimum, captured by partisan calculation.”
The scourge I write of, the unchecked spread of kush across our communities and the alarming rise in youth addiction and death, is not an abstract moral panic. It is a public health catastrophe and a security failure. Families are grieving; neighbourhoods are losing their young. Instead of aggressive, impartial policing and a public health response, we have a pattern of behaviour that suggests the police are turning a blind eye while the nation bleeds.
The Sierra Leone Police have a statutory mandate to prevent crime, to protect life and property, to maintain public order and enforce the law. The Sierra Leone Police Act states the service is responsible for “the protection of lives and properties and the enforcement of laws.” A professional force would act accordingly. Yet we see the very opposite.
“A police force that protects power instead of people becomes an accomplice to injustice.”
International guidance echoes those duties. For example, the Code of Conduct for Law Enforcement Officials adopted under the auspices of the United Nations and the INTERPOL Repository of Practice both hold that “Law enforcement officials shall at all times fulfil the duty imposed upon them by law, by serving the community and by protecting all persons against illegal acts.” Meanwhile, the African Charter on Human and People’s Rights, to which Sierra Leone is a party, through its Resolution on Police and Human Rights in Africa, affirms that police services must “respect the dignity inherent in the individual in the discharge of their duties.”
If those words mean anything, they mean that the police must protect the public’s right to complain, even to march, about a crisis that is killing their children. They must act when illegal traffickers and distributors poison our youth. They must investigate allegations that implicate anyone, regardless of party or position.
Instead, we see the very opposite. Public statements and media narratives coming from the police leadership and spokespeople have taken the tone of denial, deflection and, at times, derision. The Inspector General of Police, the person sworn to be the nonpartisan head of the service, must explain why the police appear to be treating community driven protests about kush as a problem to be silenced rather than a national emergency to be addressed. If he has been colluding, even tacitly, with traffickers or letting political actors intimidate law enforcement priorities, that is a betrayal of his office and a dereliction of duty.
“When arrogance replaces accountability, the police lose both their legitimacy and their humanity.”
When the mouthpiece of the police demonstrates arrogance and disdain for citizens who demand action, trust erodes. When political leaders in the legislature publicly downplay the crisis and ask rhetorical questions about witchcraft rather than accountability, it signals to the citizenry that the institutions charged with protecting them have been coopted. These are not mere rhetorical failures; they are governance failures with real, deadly consequences.
We must be precise in our condemnation, but we must not be timid. The Inspector General must explain public comments and apparent inaction. The Speaker of Parliament, who should be an independent guardian of the people’s rights, cannot be allowed to belittle the issue while the streets fill with grief. Journalists and civic groups reporting that police clearances for protests are effectively impossible are telling us something deeper: that clearance processes are being weaponised to stifle legitimate dissent. If the police function as a “private entity solely responsible to implement orders from above,” as one Sierra Leonean journalist recently observed, then the police are no longer a public protective service but an instrument of political control.
I am not accusing without cause; I am demanding accountability. Where there are credible reports whispered or shouted that some police officers and people in high places have hands in the plot to shield producers and distributors of kush, those reports must be investigated promptly, independently and transparently. If containers can vanish from ports and if the same political networks profit while communities pay the ultimate price, then no institution, least of all the police, can be above scrutiny.
“If containers can disappear and the police remain silent, then justice has already been stolen.”
The independent investigations must have teeth. They must be led by bodies that enjoy public confidence, not by insiders whose loyalties are split. They must publish findings and where appropriate refer evidence to prosecutorial authorities. Silence or stonewalling will only deepen suspicion and fuel unrest.
A professional police service would do several things immediately: launch criminal investigations into supply chains and distributors, conduct targeted operations against traffickers with judicial oversight, cooperate with health authorities to treat addiction as a medical emergency, engage in community policing to rebuild trust, and offer clear, honest public communication that acknowledges the problem and sets out measurable steps.
Law enforcement must act proportionately, protect the right to peaceful assembly, and ensure use of force rules are consistent with human rights norms. That is not optional. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights sets a baseline: “Everyone has the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association.” (Article 20) The African Charter on Human and People’s Rights reiterates that states must adopt measures to guarantee rights and freedoms and to ensure policing is consistent with the rule of law and respect for human dignity.
If the Inspector General values the legacy of the institution he leads, now is the time to reassert the police’s nonpartisan mandate. He must instruct his force to enforce drug laws impartially, to protect citizens seeking to protest peacefully, and to cooperate with independent investigators probing allegations of corruption or collusion. The Speaker of Parliament must stop trivialising a crisis that costs lives and must use his office to demand answers, not to shield those who profit from destruction. To the police spokesman who behaves arrogantly toward citizens and journalists: public trust is the thin thread that holds policing together. Humility and transparency, not bluster, will rebuild that trust.
“Humility and transparency, not bluster, will rebuild public trust.”
This is not a dispute about political advantage. It is a battle over whether Sierra Leone trusts its institutions to be instruments of the public good or tools of private power. When the young are dying, when protests are stifled and when the police are perceived as partisan or compromised, the social contract collapses. The result is not only anger in the streets; it is a longer, darker decay: institutions hollowed out, citizens alienated, and a future stolen from a generation.
We owe our young better than silence, thin statements or the cynical calculus that tolerates suffering for short term gain. Demand transparency. Demand independent investigations. Demand policing that protects life, not political privilege. Our own Constitution declares the security, peace and welfare of the people as the primary purpose of government; our national Sierra Leone Police Act entrusts the force with the protection of lives and property; and the international human rights instruments, such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, INTERPOL Code of Conduct, and the African Charter on Human and People’s Rights, insist that policing must respect human dignity, protect rights, and operate under law.
If the Inspector General, the Speaker, and those in power will not act to restore the police to its proper purpose, protection of life and property and application of the law without fear or favour, then the people must use their voices, their votes and their peaceful assemblies to reclaim both safety and justice.
“Sierra Leone’s next generation deserves a state that protects them. Anything less is a betrayal.”
