Sri Lanka, May 22 -- "To whom is a police officer's loyalty due? To no mother's son; but to the law of the land"

-Fred Brohier - Director, Police Training [in 1950s]

The Galle Face was initially laid out by the Dutch who used the place as a strategic line of fire against the Portuguese when they installed their cannons along it. The marshy land in the heart of capital was filled and leveled for horse racing in British-Ceylon in the early 1820s, under Governor Edward Barnes. However, the one-and-a-half miles long Colpetty Race Course was moved to a neglected Cinnamon estate further inland in 1893.

This rectangular ribbon of seafront between the Galle Road and the Indian Ocean which was earlier bounded to the north by the Beira, the ceme...