Ocean Security

The stolen goods: a digital camera, a set of headphones, five computers. The suspects: the security guards who passed the baton at 3 am -- one leaving his shift and one taking over. The beige walls outside the house were crowned with razor wire. From the tip of the house facing the ocean it was a 350-foot drop. The grim prosecutor ruled out everything but an organized break-in. The guards pleaded not guilty before a magisterial judge. They were locked up a little under a month in South Beach, Monrovia's notorious prison, before being transferred to Criminal Court C at the Temple of Justice. The prosecutor described fruitless searches on the black market, and failed to recover anything, but remained defiant. "I'm a Liberian and there's no way you can do this to me and expect to get away with it." It was clear easily one of the men could have been innocent. We asked what would happen to the suspects if they were found guilty. "Twenty to twenty-five years in South Beach," the manager of the security firm told us. "It's SOP -- both guys should have conducted inventory." We tried to call it off, call it all off, but the men insisted justice would run its course.