STREET HOOLIGAN SKY POWER is homeless. He has lived in the streets as a pick pocket, taxi conductor or car loader, trickster, drug addict for the most of his young life. Without doubt, he is a nuisance to citizens and being chased off the streets, but has nowhere to go.
SKY POWER WALKS TO CAR parking in the God Bless You community with a rock in his hand, without fear, he smashes the back windshield, and begin to act in a disgruntle manner.
HE TELLS THE POLICE, “I AM in the community and there is nobody to feed me, and I do not have anywhere to sleep, so if I commit a crime, they will put me in jail, and the government will be responsible to feed me.”
SKY POWER’S SCENARIO IS A CLEAR indication that chasing these street hooligans off popularly known as Zogoes may not yield desired results; rather, there is now a sense of fear of increasing crime rate in various communities where these Zogoes are running to.
INSPECTOR GENERAL OF THE LIBERIAN National Police recognizes this gap and admits in an interview with FrontPage late September. “Whilst it is true that these people themselves are victims of the systemic issues—the problem we have to deal with is not Police problem is system problem—they kind of impede our functions, so if we cannot deal with them we cannot have our parts of the job taken care of,” Inspector General Coleman says.
THE ZOGOS’ PLIGHT BRINGS TO mind the vital need for a vibrant social welfare and rehabilitation center, where these energetic young men, who are also citizens with equal rights, can be catered to and given the opportunity to assimilate themselves into society.
INSPECTOR GENERAL COLEMAN in that interview: “We are concerned about it. We are not just trying to move them from the street, we are going beyond that. We have been trying to talk to other partners to see what other programs can be developed to incorporate them and try to rehabilitate them and put them back into society. But for now, we have to keep the street free that people can walk, people can take taxi freely at night and during the day and create a safe zone.
IN OUR VIEW, THE POLICE action and by extension, the government’s is hypocritical. There must be a social welfare or a rehabilitation component of freeing the streets of these hoodlums.
Police Spokesman Sam Collins is on record for saying, “During our Police operations, we usually raid ghettoes, and when the Zogos are caught with substances, they are the ones we sent to court, but if they are loitering in the streets, we send them home to their various communities to become productive citizens.” The question is: Which homes you send them to? Where are their homes? Are their families willing to accept them if at all they have any?
WE CANNOT OVER EMPHASIZE the security threat Zogos pose to the nation. They are like a time bomb – something which is being taken for granted by our security apparatus in their handling of the Zogo issue.
IF THE MONROVIA CENTRAL PRISON is overcrowded and cannot hold Zogos who commit crimes and there are no rehabs for these hoodlums, then they are being cut loose into communities, this time with rage and revenge in their eyes.
WHILE IT TAKES THEM ALMOST an entire day to get some cash to afford the drugs they take, any ill minded person could manipulate them with few dollars to carry out any operation, some of which could be detrimental to national security. This is something that is worth attacking sooner than later.
INTERESTINGLY, LIKE SKY POWER, there are many of them who have expressed willingness to leave the streets only if there is a facility to help them rehabilitate and teach them some skills that would make them useful to society.
WE URGE THE GOVERNMENT OF Liberia to have a broader plan rather than fetching water into baskets. In other words, chasing these folks off the streets without providing rehabilitation and counseling services is just a waste of national resources.
IN THE FACE OF UNMIL DRAWDOWN, elections upcoming, there is the compelling need to address the issue of street hooligans as a matter of urgency. Even the inadequate budget of the Police in this fiscal year will play in this unfortunate situation.