Get police reforms, community policing back on track

President Uhuru Kenyatta, Deputy President William Ruto and Inspector-General of Police David Kimaiyo do not tire of reminding us that Kenya’s security is a shared responsibility between the public and the apparatuses mandated to keep Kenya safe and the men and women in charge of them.

Security, the President informed us in a sleek, glitzy and famous advert, starts with each one of us.

I have a problem with this high-powered campaign. First, its tenor and disposition suggest that we, the public, have failed ourselves, the government and the security apparatuses in fighting crime.
The President, DP and IG are suggesting that ordinary Kenyans, having failed in keeping themselves safe.

Second, the President, Deputy President William Ruto and Kimaiyo began trumpeting this line when it became clear that the institutions mandated to keep Kenyans secure and safe were increasingly coming up short against criminals.

Third, whilst it is true that the public have a role in keeping themselves secure and safe, it must not be forgotten that there are institutions that are legally tasked with providing security.

Fourth, there are men and women in these institutions who are trained in protecting people and their property through gathering and using intelligence to prevent crime, investigate and apprehend law-breakers or, in a word, enforce the law.

TAX PAYER'S SWEAT

Fifth, these people have been trained at the expense of the taxpayer and they are paid to execute what they are trained to do.

Some of them have the tough duty of pounding the streets at night so that the taxpayer may sleep soundly.

Last, let us also not forget that the role the public can play in fighting crime consists principally in providing information about criminal activity chiefly to the police and the intelligence community.

That means the public must work closely with the security apparatuses, and especially the police, in identifying the security needs and challenges facing them, the answers to them and how to realise them. But, Kenya’s policemen and women and the public are yet to be friends, the introduction of Community-Based Policing in the last decade notwithstanding.

The public distrust police mainly because while they are supposed to keep them safe, all too often police mistreat and burden them: Elements in the service extort money and bribes; run protection rings; hire out their guns and uniforms to thugs; falsify and or contaminate evidence; deliberately bungle investigations to throw out cases, and summarily execute suspects.

Therefore, the public tolerate the service as a necessary evil, which is to say most members of the public would rather give the service a wide berth.

This inevitably brings to mind the question, what happened to police reforms? Reform of the police and community policing were deemed intrinsically important and integral to changing the Kenyan society in the wake of the 2007/08 post-election violence.

POLICE VETTING

A glimpse into what may have happened to the reform process was in evidence when the police top brass appeared before a vetting panel.

The officers in charge of reforms appeared not to know what the docket was about. Was it an accident that officers in charge of reform were that out-of-place? Why, pray, is the Independent Policing Oversight Authority an unwelcome idea to the National Police Service Commission?

Because, put bluntly, the service is hostile to civilian oversight. The epitome of this unwillingness and resistance to change is the top brass. Its shoot-to-kill orders smack of a business-as-usual mindset and, worse, disregard for constitution-anchored civil rights. The security-starts-with-you campaign camouflages government’s failure to protect Kenyans.

It blames the public for the failure of the security apparatuses.

The government is the alpha and omega of provision of security and to get the public involved, it must get police reforms back on track.

First police, in particular, and security forces in general, must learn to respect the public.
Remember that the Kenya Defence Forces unleashed terror on innocent people in Mt Elgon in 2008 and looted Westgate in 2013.

The army massacred innocent Somali in Wagalla in 1984 and is now terrorising the people of West Pokot. Policemen similarly maltreated innocent people in Eastleigh this year as they ostensibly searched for terrorists.
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