Improving police welfare key to national security
Recruits in a parade during a past pass-out ceremony at Kenya Police College Kiganjo in Nyeri County. The mere reorganisation of the National Police Service (NPS) cannot remedy all the composite and cyclic challenges facing the sector.
Police oversight largely involves the media, individual citizens, communities and civil society groups. The spiralling accusations and counter-accusations on the disbanded Special Service Unit of the Directorate of Criminal Investigations point to the global tendency to mistrust security agencies, especially in the face of allegations such as extrajudicial killings.
The Kenyan civil society and the media tend to give prominence to illegal acts by rogue elements in law enforcement agencies as opposed to focusing on the positives of policing.
For instance, police officers killed in terror ambushes or in encounters with armed bandits and cattle rustlers may not get the same support as allegations of criminal acts by rogue law enforcement personnel.
Human beings tend to have stronger reactions to negative news. The danger in this is that parochial interests may take pre-eminence over national issues.
As is being witnessed, mere reorganisation of the National Police Service (NPS) cannot remedy all the composite and cyclic challenges facing the sector.
Official data indicates that, between 2017 and 2021, the NPS lost up to 393 officers in the line of duty, while slightly more than 3,000 sustained various degrees of injuries. A majority of the fatalities occurred in parts of North Eastern and Rift Valley regions, either in ambushes by armed bandits and cattle rustlers or al-Shabaab targeting police posts, particularly in parts of the coastal and North Eastern regions.
These are not mere statistics, but Kenyan citizens who also deserve the attention of policymakers.
Poor housing
Other challenges include the politicisation of police reforms, inadequate and poor housing, transportation deficiencies, budgetary deficits, work-related trauma and threats such as terrorism and cybercrime.
In the recent past, cases of law enforcement personnel committing suicide have been on the rise.
In 2019, the NPS launched a psycho-social support programme dubbed ‘Muamko Mpya-Healing the Uniform Initiative’ to help officers cope with the difficult circumstances under which they work.
Such programmes are key to any planning for the reorganisation of the NPS. Civil society, communities and the media can also leverage positive police-community relations by setting up platforms for constructive dialogue about policing as a public good.
The Independent Policing Oversight Authority (Ipoa) annually conducts inspections of police premises and reports its findings and recommendations to policymakers. A comparison of reports from 2017 to 2021 indicates insufficient follow-through.
Inadequate vehicles, general dissatisfaction with their welfare, the inefficiency of operational communication gadgets, inadequate office space and Informational Technology have featured in Ipoa reports with concomitant recommendations for improvements.
Police officers are human beings, not just law enforcement agents. The simplistic assumption that structural reorganisation would end perennial problems is not likely to achieve much if key issues are not addressed.
Mr Kwinga is political scientist. skwinga@ gmail.com
