Published: September 9, 2026
MONROVIA — The former head of the Liberia National Police’s Crime Services Department will answer bribery and obstruction charges from outside a cell, after a Monrovia City Court magistrate approved a US$15,000 property bond Tuesday for Johnny Bolar Dean, accused of taking US$10,000 to compromise a US$317 million drug trafficking investigation.
By Melvin Jackson
Stipendiary Magistrate L. Ben Barco approved the bond, along with a separate US$5,000 bond for Dean’s co-defendant, Stephanie Fefe Mensah, the woman police say handed him the money. Both bonds were posted by the same surety, Denco Liberia Inc., represented by Othello E. Findley Jr., and both rest on a single property deed valued in the filings at about US$524,000 and described as duly probated and registered, with taxes paid to date. Each obliges the defendant to appear for hearing and all subsequent proceedings until the case is determined. Dean signed his bond with Findley. Mensah’s carries her signature and Findley’s, and Jeremiah Samuel Dugbo witnessed it.
Dean, 40, and Mensah are charged with criminal conspiracy, bribery, tampering with a criminal investigation, and obstruction of government functions by a public servant, according to a police charge sheet dated Sept. 1.
The charge sheet alleges Dean took the US$10,000 from Mensah while the two men she was allegedly acting for, identified as Edison Brown and Alpha Bah, were under investigation by the National Joint Investigative Task Force, and that he told her that her “boss-man” had been arrested. Police said he was not authorized to communicate with her at all, given the sensitivity of the case, and accused him of disclosing confidential investigative information, failing to carry out duties he was required to perform, and using his position to frustrate the inquiry.
Dean acknowledged receiving the money in a written statement to investigators but said it was given to him for safekeeping and described Mensah as his lover, police said. Investigators rejected that account. Police said investigators recovered the US$10,000 from him during the investigation.
The matter reached the Crime Services Department on Aug. 18, when Dean and Mensah were turned over following an administrative investigation by the police Professional Standards Division that found them liable for conspiracy and bribery-related conduct, according to the police account. A special investigative team headed by Assistant Commissioner of Police Harold T. Jones was then constituted, and it concluded that Dean received the money while the inquiry into Brown and Bah was active.
Neither the charge sheet nor the bond filings state how Dean left the post that put him in charge of police criminal investigations. Sen. Darius Dillon had publicly demanded that Inspector General Gregory Coleman dismiss and prosecute him over the alleged payment.
Barco is the same magistrate conducting the preliminary examination of former Vice President Jewel Howard-Taylor in the wider narcotics investigation.
None of the allegations have been tested in court, and Dean and Mensah are presumed innocent. Neither has entered a plea, and neither they nor their counsel could be reached for comment. The police have not commented publicly beyond the charge sheet.
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