'SOME POLICEMEN ARE DRUG-PUSHERS'

Banjul

A senior officer has said that it has become a serious concern of the police that officers willingly work as agents for drug-pushers and take up the initiative themselves.

The senior officer, talking on condition of anonymity, told The Independent that some of their men have been sending the name of the police as an institution into serious disrepute and must be identified and weeded from the force before they wrought more damage to their image as uncompromising law enforcers.  The officer said that the involvement of policemen in activities of drug pushing has reached alarming proportions as they submit themselves as willing accomplices for irredeemable drug dealers who are being hunted by the police.

"Any security officer caught in activities related to drugs will be dealt with according to law.  He will be stripped and paraded as a serious offender.  The police are supposed to be role models, but not accomplices in offences that are already giving our youth a hard time and giving the country a bad name.

"In any institution, they are always good and bad elements and it may take time to separate them.  But we are embarking on an exercise to cleanse the force of these deceitful people" he added.

The police he said will do all their power to encourage people to report drug dealers, smugglers and those who smoke cannabis.

The officer's interview coincided with a series of raids launched by the police in Brikama where over 20 alleged dealers in illicit drugs were arrested.  Members of the unit justified the exercise, saying it was waging an all-out war on drug dealing in the town after persistent reports about such activities.

"It is the duty of the police to mount raids on citizens and non-citizens who were dealing in drugs, which is a disincentive for unemployed Gambian youths.  We will not spare any drug dealer as the police try to make a clean sweep of the area as part of its broader exercise to transform The Gambia into a drug-free country".