Sierra Leone Police Brutality and corrupt Magistrate Court: Sonny Cole Tells  His Ordeal   Posted by Tamba Morkway-Sossah Wednesday, 27,August 2014   http://tambasosa-troubleshootingzone.blogspot..com

Mr Edmondson Sonny Cole, commonly known as Sonny Cole, is a veteran photojournalist from Sierra Leone currently residing in Sydney, Australia, where he helps to present the Sierra Leone Community Radio on SkidRow 88.9FM. He is also one of the most outstanding and patriotic Sierra Leoneans in Australia, particularly in terms of hospitality and patriotism. Moreover, Sonny Cole is not only the Vice-Chairman of the Association of Sierra Leone Journalists in Exile (ASALJIE) but is the current Chairman of the Sierra Leone Community Council (SLCC), the umbrella organisation that covers the various Sierra Leonean organisations in Sydney. Sonny Cole received the heavy hands of the Sierra Leone Police when he answered to a call by ASALJIE members to make a trip to Sierra Leone to cover the country’s current achievements under President Ernest Bai Koroma’s APC government and to take note of some of the challenges that the administration faces after 11 years of a brutal pogrom. The aim of ASALJIE was to put Sonny Cole’s findings into a documentary film as a follow-up on the 2007 documentary film, Darkness Over Paradise, which was put together by some ASALJIE members and which greatly helped to draw the attention of the international public to the wanton destruction that Sierra Leone faced. The main aim of the follow-up documentary was to show the international community how much Sierra Leone has done since the end of the war and how much is yet to be done through international support. Unfortunately, the aim of ASALJIE might have been given a negative connotation by some non-progressive elements in Sierra Leone which ultimately led to the brutal attack on Sonny Cole in the country’s capital (Freetown) in April this year. In a recent interview with the Sierra Leone Radio (Sydney), Sonny Cole told the numerous listeners that he was disappointed that the journalists association’s patriotic and nationalistic efforts were frustrated and nearly thwarted by those who thought the journalists’ aim was to expose their rampant corrupt, lawless and indiscipline attitudes that are most times openly displayed with all impunity. Sonny Cole further explained that when he was in Sierra Leone, he was able to visit many offices of senior government officials, including ministers, permanent secretaries, directors, etc. but, unfortunately, many of them failed to open their doors for him to interview them even though they were well informed before Sonny Cole embarked on his journey to Freetown. “However, there were some government officials who were very accommodating, obviously those who had no skeleton hidden in their cupboards,” journalist Sonny Cole added. Explaining how he was brutalised by the police and his personal belongings vandalised, Sonny Cole said it all started on April 28, the second day of the country’s Independence celebrations. He said after a hectic time covering events the previous day, the actual day of the Independence, he was resting at home when he heard gunshots and he became curious and concerned over gunshots in the midst of celebrations. Armed with his camera and other press paraphernalia, he went on the street to discover that there was a clash between followers of two rival mask-devils, which forced the police to fire their weapons in order to disperse the large crowd of feuding parties and onlookers. Sonny Cole wanted to record the lawlessness, a replica of the lawlessness that characterised the war that the country is recovering from. While he was busy filming, he was rudely asked by the police why he was filming the fracas without their permission. His response was that he was a journalist from Australia trying to uncover the daily issues of public concern, especially lawlessness in the country, that the police are always grappling with. The police asked for his ID which he produced but the police told him bluntly that they didn’t care where he came from, that it was his business if he came from Jamaica or Jericho; all they wanted to know was whether he took permission from the police before filming. He responded that he didn’t think he needed permission from the police to film a live scene in the night as a journalist, especially when it was an emergency situation that journalists are helping the police to expose and put an end to. “At that point, I was immediately arrested, viciously punched and kicked several times until I was nearly unconscious. Their aim was to snatch my expensive video camera but I held on fast to it because if I had let go of it in the absence of the police boss, I would never have seen it again. I know that it’s only in Australia that one could get a seized property back from the police and not in Sierra Leone.” He added that he used his skill by luring the police to their vehicle where, obviously, was their commanding officer. He said through all that time, he was being hit on every part of his body. According to Cole, when they arrived to the vehicle, there was a senior police officer by the name of AIG Memuna Conteh, who failed to listen to him when he tried to explain the situation to her. “I don’t want to listen to you or to any other journalist who think they can do anything in their own way in this country,” Memuna Conteh is quoted as saying and ordered the brutalised journalist to hand over his camera to her men or he would “face worse things”. Now under arrest, Sonny Cole was taken on a marathon ride as the police rode around the city to arrest and brutalise anyone they saw, even those that had nothing to do with the evening fracas but were only on the street either to celebrate their country’s Independence from British colonial rule or on their way home from their daily activities. He said he saw several innocent people being arbitrarily arrested, searched and their personal belongings taken away with no hope of getting them back because no official written record was made of the seizures. “This happened even in areas that were quiet and had nothing to do with the problems of that evening.” “On one occasion, I saw AIG Memuna Conteh alight from the vehicle, went to a group of young people who were peacefully dancing on their own property and she forcefully grabbed their musical set, threw it to the ground so that the whole set went into splinters. I was shocked at this apparent abnormal behaviour so I told her boldly that it would have been better to arrest them than to destroy something they might have spent their hard-earned money to buy, taking into consideration the high cost of living in the country. If you abuse the rights of the youth because you have the power and if you take away the source of their joy, it is like you are telling them to go into crime,” Sonny Cole is quoted as telling AIG Memuna Conteh. He said in order for him not to see further nefarious activities of the police against harmless citizens and in order to keep him mute, he was taken to the police station and locked up for the night. What a way of lodging a journalist (Sierra Leone style) after a hectic night-out! The next day, he was charged to court for riotous conduct and, to save their own heads, the police fabricated an excuse (another backward side of the Sierra Leone Police?) that Sonny Cole was seriously drunk and couldn’t tell the difference between decency and impropriety. “I don’t drink, nor have I ever partaken of any drug. I have never even tasted cigarettes. Those who knew me when I was growing up in Freetown, those who knew me when I was working in various offices in Freetown as a photojournalist, including State House and the Sierra Leone Broadcasting Service (SLBS), now SLBC, and those who know me now, including members of our journalists association, will testify to the fact that I neither drink nor smoke,” he affirmed. “I know the viciousness, dishonesty, manipulative and corrupt attitude of the Sierra Leone Police when they deal with innocent citizens – when they want to nail a powerless individual on the cross, they will use more than a hundred nails so that nothing will be able to bring you down from that cross.” He said the senior officers of the Sierra Leone Police are incapable of taking disciplinary action against junior officers who constantly take bribes from okada, podapoda/commercial drivers, businessmen and women simply because the bosses themselves are ceaselessly engaged in their own corrupt activities to enrich themselves before their time runs out as police officers. It is a game and, as they say, every game has its own rules! Sonny Cole however said that all that notwithstanding, one cannot say that there are not some good-hearted, patriotic, honest and hardworking police officers. Some are truly well-disciplined in their duties and want to contribute positively to the development of the country, but this type of police officers are so few that they are outnumbered (one hundred to one) by corrupt and arrogant ones. In other words, Sierra Leone has more rotten eggs in its police force than a dilapidated poultry farm. Sonny Cole said that when he was taken to court, he was fined more than half-a-million leones (the local currency) and was not issued a receipt. “In fact there were 27 of us that were arrested that night and fined in court but none of us was given a receipt, which simply signifies that the money went into private pockets of corrupt judges/magistrates and senior police officers. It is a chain work, which is not a strange thing in Sierra Leone. Moreover, we were not even called into the dock to defend ourselves.” When asked about the country’s development, he said ,  If only Sierra Leoneans are willing to change their corrupt and unpatriotic way of life, especially his corrupt I-don’t-care ministers and other government officials, Sierra Leone will be an exemplary country in West Africa recovering from a destructive civil conflict, which makes me to add that more powers and resources should be given to the Anti-Corruption Commission to monitor the police, Water Quay, etc., etc.” .