Radical reforms will usher in better police service
National Police Service Commission chairman Johnstone Kavuludi. The police vetting board has been asked to stop work until investigations into its top officials are complete. FILE PHOTO | NATION MEDIA GROUP
What you need to know:
- In the case of the National Police Service — an institution abused by politicians and executive for long since independence — the Constitution ensures the principle is fully enforced.
- They were also required to recommend reforms and institutional arrangements to create capable, credible and effective professional police. But the recommendations were shelved.
Security problems in Kenya present a watershed opportunity to initiate radical police reforms. The reforms are not for the greater glory of the police.
They are for better security and protection of the people, for upholding human rights, and generally for improving governance.
Far-reaching police reforms seek to achieve two main objectives.
First, functional autonomy for the police – through security of tenure, streamlined appointment and transfer processes. Second, the creation of a “buffer body” between the police and the government – and enhanced accountability, for organisational performance and individual misconduct.
The 2010 Constitution has established mechanisms for cleaning up the stink in the police. It is for the judiciary to enforce this.
Considering the radical changes in the political, social and economic situation in the country, sweeping reforms will go a long way in transforming the police into a people-friendly service.
Kenya desperately requires a police service with a different working philosophy. In the last 20 years, more than eight task forces or commissions, spending about Sh10 billion, have been formed to examine the role and performance of the police as a law-enforcing agency and as an institution to protect the rights of the citizens.
RECOMMENDATIONS SHELVED
They were also required to recommend reforms and institutional arrangements to create capable, credible and effective professional police. But the recommendations were shelved.
The basic fundamental problem regarding police is how to make them functional as an efficient and impartial law enforcement agency fully motivated and guided by the objectives of service to the public, upholding the constitutional rights and liberties of the people. The reforms will secure professional independence for the police.
Continued control of the police by the political executive has the inherent danger of making police a tool for subverting the process of the law, promoting the growth of authoritarianism, and shaking the very foundations of democracy. A corrupt and inept police service significantly undermines the criminal justice system.
In a historic judgment in 2006, the Supreme Court of India (Prakash Singh & Ors vs Union of India and Ors) said this on police reforms: “The commitment, devotion and accountability of the police has to be only to the rule of law. The supervision and control has to be such that it ensures that the police serve the people without any regard, whatsoever, to the status and position of any person while investigating a crime or taking preventive measures.”
The judges added that its approach had to be service-oriented but police also needed to be held accountable.
A careful reading of Kenya’s Constitution provides an important insight into the principle of shared powers and functions between and among state institutions and offices.
ABUSED BY POLITICIANS
In the case of the National Police Service — an institution abused by politicians and executive for long since independence — the Constitution ensures the principle is fully enforced.
The National Police Service Commission, apart from playing the role of “buffer body” between government and police, is the sole body to oversee the personnel policy function.
Judge George Odunga, in a petition filed by the International Centre for Policy and Conflict, ruled on March 26, 2014: “Any office in the National Police Service or any appointment, transfers or promotion of an officer can only be done by and in full authorisation of the National Police Service Commission.”
In addition, the commission was noted as the only body obliged “to appoint in a competitive and transparent recruitment exercise police officers who qualify for any position anywhere in the country. The court will not nurture the tumour of impunity and lawlessness. This tumour of impunity is like an octopus, the way it stretches its tentacles to get into new places.”
It is, therefore, clear from the Constitution and the judiciary that NPSC should transparently and competitively recruit the Inspector-General of Police, recommend names to the President and allow Parliamentary vetting.
Writer is executive director, International Centre for Policy and Conflict [email protected])
