Some parts of the rural-urban have lately seen dramatic expansion as new communities are built, just twenty-one miles away from the capital Freetown.

It makes it difficult for more people to be guaranteed safe stay due to high rate of criminal offences.

Tombo community, Kossoh Town, Yams Farm, Waterloo, Malambay, Koya Chiefdom, are marked as dense communities with an increasing number of residents living in these places.

As more areas are being opened up with business flourishing in the centre of Waterloo at Tombo Market, and so more people have come to live in places around Waterloo town.

People come to stay in Waterloo to avoid the high costs of rents on houses in Freetown, the capital.

Sadly, they are not being provided with the required security services needed especially in extreme areas like Bolima, Ma Santigie, Machenke, parts of Malambay, Joe Town and Mafonike, Newton, Forgbo and Songo.

This is a great cause of concern that the local government and central government must work to address.

But, in a nation with just a small number police force and money and logistics like vehicles to run the posts which should be built by the government, it is rather too difficult to add up more security posts in expanded communities in the Urban-Rural because government may say they don’t have cash.

So many people risk living in these communities with no security services rendered to them.

And so, as a result, more crimes are committed in isolation as they never get reported as often as they should be.

As such, criminals go-scot free as they parade the nights with sharp machetes to threaten peaceful residents to give in what they have in possession.

We were able to speak to two residents at Fellow Farm community about the crime rate and its causes.

“We have many young guys sitting daily at many of the ataya bases (local coffee shops), some don’t do anything to earn a living,” says a youth who identified himself as community youth.

A woman who sells second-hand clothes shared with us her bad experience as she once narrowly escaped death from cannibals.

“I went to a far away place by 55 community downwards, very far away… I saw a lone building where nobody was except some neighbours around who told me to walk off from there that it is a bad place – it is a criminals’ hideouts – cannibals who can disfigure human parts for rituals.”

Such a place has never been raided by police officers in Waterloo – we believe so.

“We don’t have many men to go to those far-flung communities. Sometimes except that you use your own money to hire a bike to go to those remote communities while domestic violence is rife and it is committed by village men. It is really sad. We need more police posts, vehicles, money, more personnel, and other necessary logistics to better equip us to be able to do our work properly,” said a high-ranking female officer who was stationed at Mile 38, and who spoke to our journalist in an exclusive interview in the year 2020.