From Monrovia, AllAfrica's Boakai Fofana blogs on a recent experience with crime and of how a new initiative is helping to offset worries that it is growing.
At 2am, I received a call from a friend warning me to "be awake - armed robbers are in Mrs. Clarke's house." I was so frightened that I jumped out of bed immediately, knocking my head against a table in my room. Everywhere was dark. The generator, which stays on only until midnight, was off.
Totally confused, I stepped out into the living room and peeped out of the window. I couldn't see anything, and no one was around. The friend who called me lives a few meters away. I couldn't see his house at this point and didn't know where the robbers were headed next. He sounded very alarmed - was he in trouble?
I woke up everyone in my house and started phoning my neighbors. Within minutes, one came out of his house. “The ERU (Emergency Response Unit) is here - let's come outside,” he said. Still afraid, I saw flashes of light from a moving vehicle.
It was the ERU, an elite section of the Liberian National Police responsible for dealing with violent crimes like armed robbery. There's a great deal of public confidence in their policing capacity so far. By the time of their arrival, the robbers were gone, but so were our neighbor's mobile phones and cash.
“I didn't see anyone with a gun. Two of them had cutlasses,” Mrs. Clarke told the ERU officers. Fully equipped, they looked like a United States SWAT team.
There was an air of relief in the community - once the ERU was around, people were happy to come outside to see what was happening.
The ERU was established through a joint effort of the Government of Liberia, the United States, the United Nations and the government of Ireland.
Their formation came at a time of press reports of an increase in armed robberies. “Or is it press sensationalism?” asked Rebecca Murray, a visting journalist working with the Inter Press Service (IPS) news agency. “Because I feel a lot safer here than I feel in New York.”
Lately, there have many reports of crime in Liberia. The first major robbery to take place in daylight occurred in Monrovia a few days ago when criminals broke into a community bank branch. The break-in received wide coverage in local newspapers, many of which suggested that crime is out of control.
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But this is Liberia, a country emerging from years of heinous atrocities, and it was the first major incident of daylight robbery.
“The papers make it sound like it's so chaotic,” said one taxi driver. “But there's a great deal of night life out there. Bars and restaurants are springing up everywhere.” It's true - there's virtually no community in Monrovia without a local bar or the sound of music coming from structures built for entertainment.
A number of initiatives by NGOs, United Nations agencies and the government have been taken to find jobs for the tens of thousands of ex-combatants who were disarmed after the war. Still, a large proportion of them remain unemployed and they get much of the blame for crime.
“This is real. I feel scared. I don't think it's press sensationalism,” said Edwin Wilson, a 27-year-old university student and youth leader of a community in Monrovia's eastern Sinkor suburb. His view is shared by many.
Although that early morning robbery in my community got me shaking, it was the first the community has experienced in post-conflict Liberia. For a country entrenched in a culture of violence for 14 years, it does not seem as if things are out of control.
Now that I know the police can respond as quickly as they did, I feel better.
