Kenya's police stations set to get a facelift

The National Police Service has launched a beautification programme aimed at painting all police stations and police lines in the country.

NPS will partner with the Prison Service and security firm Scroll and Priest Limited in the exercise that will start in Nairobi before rolling out to other stations.

Inspector General of Police Joseph Boinnet launched the painting exercise at the Parklands police station in the city and declared they intend to make operational bases for police habitable.

“We have partnered with the private partners in ensuring the officers have good environment to work in. We invited private partners to come forward and help us making police stations and lines better,” he said.

Prisoners will be trained on professional painting before they are deployed to their areas of work. Prisons Commissioner General Isaiah Osugo was present during the launch.

Boinnet also revealed the process of digitising all police stations is set to start as soon as the painting exercise ends.

This will see all police records digitised and police stations connected to the national police command centre.

“This will enable police from any station connected to the command centre hence respond to issues within their areas of jurisdiction."

Boinnet said the process of opening up regional command centres is rolling out well and will be operational within months.

Already the first phase of the system for Nairobi and Mombasa is now under the National Police Service after formal hand-over.

At least 1,800 high-powered CCTV cameras have been rolled out in this stage along with an Integrated Command, Control and Communications Centre (iC3) and an emergency response contact centre that is equipped to receive up to 25,000 calls per day.

Some 7,600 modern communication devices have been handed over to the police while over 3,000 officers have been trained to build deeper capacity for the next generation of security enforcement in Kenya.

The new system is being controlled from the Jogoo House command centre in Nairobi from where all police officers can be tracked while undertaking their duties.

A total of 7,600 police officers can be served at a go but it will be scaled up to 50,000 officers later on, officials said.

The new system is being rolled out by Safaricom at a cost of Sh15 billion.

According to officials, the system uses three high definition cameras; infra-red camera, box camera and dome cameras.

The dome camera can cover a 360 degree area while the infra-red camera will have ability to capture images in low light areas.

Other than the Nairobi Central Business District, the CCTV cameras have been fitted along major high ways like the Thika Superhighway at strategic positions.

Under the new system there will be clusters formed in which junior officers can address their boss. Every member of the cluster is set to get any ongoing communication.