It Must Be Nipped In The Bud
Images Of A Struggling Bitter-Colanuts Seller Monrovia City Police Officer First Deleted But Were Unsuccessful In Permanently Deleting—Thanks To Digital Technology
By Frank Sainworla, Jr., fsainworla@yahoo.com
Managing Editor, www.newspublictrust.com
The actions and verbal utterances made by some officers of the Monrovia City Police on the afternoon of Tuesday, September 2, 2025 on Monrovia’s Mechlin Street only took me back to my days as Local Radio Reporter and foreign Correspondent covering the Liberian civil conflict.
I spotted a struggling young market woman rolling a wheelbarrow apparently headed down the Mechlin Street hill leading to Waterside. But as I reached the female marketer and her wheelbarrow filled with bitter-colanuts, there was a woman who had tried to buy the colanuts but was compelled to intervene on the market woman’s behalf, because she is arrested by city police officers who were then in the process of trying to seize her goods with her megaphone. Another thing is that it seemed weird to see 10-15 city police officers deployed in that little corridor— between Mechlin and Ashmun Streets intersection
As a patriotic citizen first with compassion and belief in the dignity of labour, I quickly decided to join forces with the lady to help prevail on the overzealous and hostile city police officers to leave the poor woman alone since she was breaking any known rolling her wheelbarrow around with her bitter-colanuts—she was not stationary. My polite, plead to the officers was greeted by an avalanche of insults, vulgar expressions, something that won’t get a reciprocation for person like me.
So, as the hawkish and indiscipline city police officer decided to up the ante, I then decided to identify myself as Journalist Frank Sainworla and give them my press identification card. But that did not tone down their insults and harassment of the market women and I told them I will put them on record for their unprofessional behaviour. Meanwhile, as I was intervening on behalf of the market woman, a huge city policeman was videotaping the scene on his mobile phone with a commentary that I was obstructing execution of police duties, which I immediately rebutted warning them that I’ll pursue legal action if such falsehood ever landed on their Social Media or any other platform
Quickly I took my phone to take photo of the scene. Enraged, they swiftly ruffled me and illegally seized it, whisking off to delete the content (images), despite the fact that I repeatedly warning them not to do. In fact, given that it was a public space, I didn’t even have to be a Journalist to have taken picture of the scene.
After some five minutes, a female city police officer then handed me my phone and said they did what they wanted to do: deleted the images and my content. After the fact, one thing the indiscipline city police officers there didn’t know is that what they deleted in the first layer could later be retrieve, which was eventually done by professional colleagues when I arrived at the OK FM Newsroom after my ordeal to tell them my story. And minutes later, I was hosted as a walk-in guest on Julius Jeh’s live phone-in talk show, OK AFTERNOON CONVERSATION.
Indeed, such an action by one of the arms of the state security apparatus in the nation’s capital city, Monrovia is alarming. For a Journalist’s recording device (camera/phone) to be illegally and forcefully seize and content deleted is nothing less than an attack on the press, free speech and expression. At the end I can’t believe this can’t be in this day and age—2025 for state security to do such in clear view and in open public space in the middle of the day.
To even put up a bandit posture of illegally seizing Journalist phone/recording devise to delete images or content is a dangerous trend, and everything must be done to nip such a hooligan behavior in the bud!