On Monday the leadership of The Gambia Police ruefully and publicly confirmed
what many a citizen has long ago concluded: Citizens have totally lost faith
in them as an institution to do the basic job that characterizes their very
essence viz-a-viz enforcing laws that every Gambian is supposed to live
under. For the Police losing the general publics' confidence is the
functional equivalent of an institutional obituary that gravely endangers our
very society. Afterall in this day and age no nation can remain viable if the
basic notion of equal protection under the law becomes a constitutional relic
and law enforcement degenerates into selective application and
vindictiveness. The Gambia Police today is beset by a myriad of problems so
endemic that even a new gov't may have to break it up and rebuild it. At the
heart of their problem is the total lack of a leadership cadre that is
professional with institutional loyalty and training to set forth a course
that can evolve a department that is equipped to fulfill it's mandate. The
problem is Yahya Jammeh is not interested in such a police force precisely
because he knows as someone who is essentially turning the gov't into a
criminal syndicate, a professional police force would by dint of their duty
stand in his way. Consequently he has devised a two pronged approach that
relies on purging the department of officers perceived to be unenthusiastic
supporters and replacing them with lackeys whose only interest lies in
undermining the department and perpetuating themselves. They spend most of
their time ensuring that legitimate investigations are stymied, innocent
people are framed while criminals as long as they have gov't sponsorship are
free to ply their trade of terror and intimidation. This poor leadership
translates into sagging morale for the poorly paid rank and file who
concentrate on scrounging a living by shaking down regular people for small
bribes and not devoting the time and effort that effective policework
demands. The President further undermines them by making it tacitly clear to
them that their very existence as an institution is in question, all in a
cynical ploy to sow uncertainty and fear of job loss making it all the easier
to manipulate and control them. To drive the message home he allows
vigilantes and thugs that he himself organizes to arm and parade themselves
in police stations in a brutish show of force that is meant to humiliate the
police.  He provides these thugs with the very resources such as guns,
vehicles, radios and cell phones that the police desperately need. Typically
this is the mode in which tyrants operate. On the one hand they actively
undermine law and order while at the same time setting up illegal outfits
such the ones Picka  and Baba Jobe run to take advantage of the vacuum
created by the gradual breakdown in law enforcement to sow fear and visit
terror on the population. They know they can count on the biggest guarantee
of all; state protection and ultimate impunity, courtesy of Yahya Jammeh. As
a result unless one or more groups of these thugs gets greeted by a hail of
bullets from the machine gun of someone they come to kill in the middle of
the night, Gambians can count on zero or mediocre police protection. They can
however count on indolent and specious press conferences from Sarjo Jallow,
Pap Cheyasin Secka and the rest of that crowd. They make me sick! We are
supposed to remotely stomach their insincere pronouncements of contrition or
outrage over activities that the gov't in which they serve is directly
responsible. The responsibility for what is happening to our country lies
squarely on their feet and they ought to shut up and live with themselves.

Karamba

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