The police should ordinarily not be armed.
That is the sum and substance of my proposal. Disarm the police as a crucial step towards enhancing public safety. Despite the opacity of the tender, we have made our peace with the security-camera roll-out by Safaricom. But for the safety of the public to be enhanced considerably, policing must be localised and this can only be successfully achieved if the police services are disarmed.
The bargain struck in the Constitution in Chapter Fourteen on national security has failed to hold. It is a restatement of colonial and post-colonial single-party values that the post-2002 Narc bargain firmly repudiated. The risks inherent in a colonial policing mindset have been demonstrated time and again over the past decade: the human rights violations in Mount Elgon and the response to the violence of 2007/2008 are proof that where the preservation of the State prevails over all other considerations, the people are not seen as partners in public safety, but as a threat, and are to be treated with suspicion at all times, even when they have legitimate grievances that must be addressed by the State and its agencies.
The National Police Service should be removed from the list of key institutions required for the security of the nation. That is a job ideally suited for border security forces, the defence forces and the national intelligence service. The principal purpose of the police service is the safety of the people and their property, and the investigation of crimes. Then, and only then, can the police service participate in the security of the nation. If it has failed in its principal job, then it matters not whether it plays a role in national security; where it has lost the trust of the people, it will be an inadequate source of vital information or intelligence about threats to the security of the nation. If that mistrust is allowed to fester, the police service may face the active resistance of the people to the performance of its duties which may require the deployment of the defence forces and intelligence officers against the civilian population and not external threats to the nation.
Another crucial step will be the devolution of policing. For it to be effective, command and control should ideally be as localised as possible so that decision-making is faster and less-prone to the waiting game that saw one hundred and forty seven victims of the attack on Garissa University College. What is retained at national level is the detective corps and the rapid reaction forces such as the Administration Police's Rapid Deployment Unit and the General Service Unit (including its Reconnaissance Company). The disarmed police service, under the command of the county government, will be better placed to deal with petty offences and work closely with the communities to prevent the commission of crimes. The national detective corps can deal with the crimes for which no witnesses are available, though, in the long term, even the detective corps should ideally be devolved. The rapid reaction forces can focus more on training and responding to major events such as the Garissa attack with minimal time-lags.
There are challenges, of course, to this proposal. But they pale in comparison to the colonial legacy that we seem determined to hold onto despite its myriad problems. Training can still be completed at national level; deployment can be the preserve of the National Police Service Commission while civilian complaints dealt with by the Independent Policing Oversight Authority. But once deployed, and unless an officer asks to be transferred to another county, promotion and other human resource management matters remain the province of the county government.
The national police command structure should be done away with; the Office of the Inspector-General is an expensive boondoggle that we no longer require. With a national training college, the principal objective of the national command structure is the proper training of the police recruits, and the command of the rapid reaction forces as well as the detective corps until it too is devolved. If it must be retained, then the Office of the Inspector-General may perform limited domestic intelligence functions with the aim of interdicting major criminal organisations such as the networks or cartels that traffic drugs, weapons and humans across our borders.
This is what reforms in policing would look like.
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