Published: August 3, 2026
Gregory Coleman has not been accused of anything. Let that be said first and plainly, because what follows is not an accusation. No authority has alleged that the inspector general of the Liberia National Police took a dollar from anyone, and no finding of wrongdoing has been made against him. This newspaper has seen nothing to suggest otherwise.
He should still step aside from the cocaine investigation, and he should do it this week.
The reason is structural and would apply to any honest commander in his position. Consider who has been swept up: the chief of the highway patrol, the head of the major crimes unit, and a deputy police commander at the country’s main airport are all suspects. The force’s chief of intelligence has been detained and questioned along with two other senior officers after suspects pointed them out to investigators. Additionally, the deputy commissioner for crime services, who managed the division known inside the force as Unit 106, was relieved after allegedly admitting he received US$10,000 connected to suspects in custody.
Highway patrol, major crimes, intelligence, crime services, and airport command are not just a few bad officers spread throughout a large organization. They form the core of the Liberia National Police’s operations, and every one of these men reports, directly or through one link, to the inspector general. Regardless of what the investigation concludes about each individual, it must ultimately raise a question that involves him: how did this happen within a command he led, and did anyone above these officers know about it?
A man cannot be the answer to that question and the person asking it.
Coleman’s defense is that the rot was found by his own people. He removed Dean himself, announced it himself, and said rank would shield nobody. Taken alone, that is creditable. Many commanders would have buried it. But it demonstrates the problem rather than solving it, because the public’s entire knowledge of what the police found out about the police comes from the police. There is no independent verification, and there cannot be while the same institution investigates itself under the same commander.
There is a more troubling fact that hasn’t received the attention it deserves. Sources familiar with the planning of the Duazon raid say it was conducted by the National Security Agency, and that the police were intentionally excluded and only brought in after the drugs were seized and the suspects subdued. Read that again. A sister agency, planning the largest narcotics operation in this country’s history, decided it couldn’t risk informing the police. The NSA now wants the investigation completely removed from police control. That decision has already been implemented operationally. What remains is for the government to formalize it openly, instead of letting it unfold as a turf war while the public draws its own conclusions.
Last week made the case more urgent. On July 30, Coleman told a press briefing that investigators had established that traffickers put money into the media to change the narrative and distract the investigation. He named no journalist, no outlet, no transaction and no evidence, and the Press Union of Liberia has given the administration 72 hours to substantiate it.
We have an interest here and we declare it. We are a Liberian newspaper and the allegation was aimed at Liberian media. Set that aside and the point stands. An investigator who accuses an entire profession of corruption while producing nothing to support it, at the moment scrutiny turns toward his own command, has stopped behaving like an investigator. That is understandable. It is also disqualifying. The standard he applied to Dean, that compromising a process is grounds for removal from it regardless of guilt in the underlying crime, is the standard that now applies to him.
Nor are we the first to say so. Nimba County Senator Samuel Kogar told the Senate on July 1 that the president should suspend Coleman and other security officials to protect the investigation’s credibility. Coleman called the senator a loose talker. A commander confident in his own house does not answer oversight with an insult.
What we propose is narrow, and it is not dismissal. Coleman should recuse himself from the narcotics cases and remain inspector general for everything else, exactly as any officer would be pulled from a case involving his own subordinates. The investigation should pass to a body outside his chain of command, led by the Ministry of Justice, with oversight visible to the public rather than internal to any agency. Given that a Serbian and a dual Colombian-Spanish national are in custody, foreign technical assistance is not an insult to sovereignty. It is what serious jurisdictions do with cases this size.
The objection is that removing the police chief mid-investigation hands a victory to the traffickers. The opposite is true. If Coleman is clean, recusal costs him nothing and returns him with his findings unassailable. If he stays, whatever this investigation concludes will be contested for years, and the men now charged will walk into court with a ready-made argument about a compromised process.
Nearly four tonnes of cocaine moved through this country with help from people wearing our uniforms. What Liberians decide about their police will rest less on how much powder burned at Caraysburg than on whether anyone believes the account they are given of who let it in. Belief cannot be commanded. It cannot be earned by an institution grading its own paper.
Step aside, Inspector General. If your house is clean, nothing is lost. If it is not, nothing you do now will hide it.
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