Let country leverage on Ipoa gains to foster police reforms

Since its inception in 2011 as Kenya’s foremost statutory civilian oversight authority on the National Police Service, the Independent Policing Oversight Authority (Ipoa) has not only focused on ensuring police compliance with the law, but also to inspire public confidence and trust in the Service.

Ipoa’s mandate spans a spectrum of policing facets including disciplinary or criminal offences committed by any member of the National Police Service (NPS), receipt and investigations of complaints by any member of the police service, monitoring and investigation of policing operations affecting members of the public, monitoring, auditing of investigations and actions taken by the police’ International Affairs Unit (IAU) and conducting ongoing inspections on police premises countrywide.

The establishment of the authority marked a major milestone in Kenya’s quest for security sector reform which traces its origins to the 1990s when Kenya began to mull reformation of the national security sector to make it more professional and accountable to the state and the public.

The promulgation of the 2010 Constitution strengthened the national quest for an accountable, professional, transparent and a disciplined police service in keeping with Article 244 of the Supreme Law of the land.

At the advent of its operations, Ipoa established a framework to guide its investigations into complaints about the police. Its Investigations Operation Manual was part of this framework that emphasised extrajudicial killings by the police, a cyclic problem that had bedevilled the sector for the longest time.

A decade down the line, accusations of extrajudicial killings have remained an Achilles’ heel in the service, invoking many questions about the feasibility of some of the police reforms programmes over time. It is thus a wonder that the police is still being accused of extrajudicial killings and enforced disappearances.

The question is even more relevant now that the country is deeply immersed in the politics of national policing, extrajudicial killings and enforced disappearances.

In the aftermath of the August 2022 elections, accusations of the defunct Special Services Unit of the Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI) over extrajudicial killings seemed to have reached a crescendo, with the former DCI Director George Kinoti coming under interminable salvo from some politicians, the media, civil society organisations and a segment of the citizenry.

The extrajudicial killings and enforced disappearances have created an atmosphere of apprehension about Ipoa and whether or not it has lived up to its responsibility.

As a matter of fact, some public commentators on the allegations has openly accused the oversight agency of sleeping on the job while people are being killed outside the law by law enforcement agents. This, however, is not the case, if the several reports available are anything to by.

The annual and semiannual performance reports that Ipoa has generated over the years show many years of commitment during which it has played its role despite the challenges it faces, including lean human resources and minimal budgets.

The reports are fairly exhaustive and essentially form the bulk of evidence-based feedback for some of the ongoing police reforms. The reports, from 2012 to date, show clear patterns and trends of challenges and opportunities in the security sector reforms in respect to human rights, accountability mechanisms and reporting modalities by the police at all police stations, physical conditions of the police premises, the status of essential supplies for effective policing across the country and welfare of police officers.

These issues form the broad clusters of Ipoa’s police reform compliance assessment and recommendations for improvements from time to time.

Essentially, Ipoa reports are the scorecards with which NPS reform stakeholders are able to monitor and evaluate feasibility of various reform programmes that are currently being implemented.

For instance, in 2012, Ipoa identified, among other issues, inadequacy of housing, insufficient operational transportation, lack of transparency in promotions and trainings, inadequate trainings on human rights, insufficiency of community policing mechanisms and inadequate continuous trainings for officers on all facets of policing. Some of these issues have perennially been flagged in Ipoa reports over the past 10 years, implying mixed police reform recommendation outcomes.

Policymakers need to review some of the recommendations that Ipoa has documented over the years for conscientious continuity and review of some of the ongoing police reform programmes.

For instance, in its July-December 2020, Ipoa identified inadequacy of allocation of operational equipment to police including vehicles, communication gadgets and office computers. Other pertinent issues that the report flagged were inadequate supply of uniforms to officers.

The fact that some of the policing challenges Ipoa flagged in 2012 still appear in its latter-day reports, some from follow up investigations, shows that stakeholders in the reform programmes require more concerted efforts to ensure that the overall goals and objectives of the reforms are achieved.

Kenyans also need to embrace the fact police reforms do not begin and end with Ipoa, but the body acts more as a diagnostic asset in the wider continuum of the reforms. It also communicates its advisory to relevant ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs) for consideration for the implementation and review of ongoing police reform programmes and activities.

By June 2021, Ipoa had conducted a total of 3,022 investigations based on its first half year performance report. A total of 415 investigation case files had been transferred to the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions while a further 98 cases were before the courts and a cumulative 12 convictions made.

The oversight agency had also made a total of 2,519 inspections of police premises, out of which 795 were follow-up investigations with correlated recommendations made to policymakers as stipulated in the Ipoa Act of 2011.