One institution cries out for reform. It is begging for it. It is also the one hidebound institution that will resist reforms until it is yanked, kicking, screaming, scratching and biting into the Twenty-first Century. Proof for the desirous efficacious effects of reform are to be found in two incidents, none surprising or shocking.
The recruitment of ten thousand policemen proceeds apace to fulfill the President's desire to hire ten thousand policemen every year. Luis Franceschi has described the cattle call that the aspiring officers go through before being selected as a vestige of the colonial system that wanted robots than computers. The colonial government used the same cattle call for the recruitment of the Home Guard which later became the provincial Administration. How a relic of a bygone era has managed to survive for fifty years remains one of those peculiarities that define the Kenyan experience.
The other incident is the death while in police custody of a man who owed a debt of six hundred shillings. He had borrowed money from a businesswoman in Githurai. He managed to pay back a substantial portion of the sum he had borrowed. At no point had he been accused of conning the woman out of her money or stolen from her. By all accounts he had met his obligations save for the balance of six hundred. He wanted more time. She would not grant. She reported him to the police. They arrested him. He was jailed pending "further developments." One of the policemen offered him an alcoholic beverage. He died the following morning "under mysterious circumstances." The police promised a "full investigation into the incident."
Daily, Kenyans get to interact with the forces of law and order, most commonly policemen and policewomen. Some are decent men and women; despite having seen much, they are very empathetic to the plight of others. Others are not, neither are they deliberately cruel. Still others are cruel, deliberately and vindictively so. It might have something to do with the manner they are trained, the manner they are treated by their superiors and the manner that they are treated by the public. But surely, we must all accept that as a nation we have treated the men and women who watch over our safety with casual disregard, hostility and utter selfishness and to expect anything other than the same in return is pretty naive.
President Kenyatta's government, having fallen in love with United Nations' statistics, has decided to build up the National Police to the tune of an additional 10,000 men and women a year for the next four years. But in tune with his predecessors, he has made tokenism in his treatment of the police a hallmark of his policy on police reforms. It is why some police will get decent housing; it is why some police will get a smidgen of insurance. The vast majority of an almost hundred-thousand man police force will make do with new equipment - leased cars and the like - but will live in squalor and filth while the hardened hears of their bosses continue to enjoy the benefits of "gold" level healthcare, apartments in leafy suburbs, chauffeured vehicles and opportunities for academic advancement. Where the freshly recruited 10,000 will end up remains a mystery.
The Government of Kenya is enamoured of public procurement, especially when the words "upgrading" and "reforms" are attached. Policing in Kenya is set to become the darling of the security sector procurement kings. Billions will be expended providing "insurance" to members of the National Police; billions will be spent building them "decent" housing; billions will be spent upgrading their equipment; billions will be expended sending some of them for "specialised" training in foreign nations; billions will be spent leasing cars and trucks. But unless how we as a nation view our police undergoes a sea change, cattle calls at recruitment drives and mysterious deaths in police custody will remain par for the course until the cows come home.
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