Killings reveal extent of police rot

Stung by a scathing report on extrajudicial killings in the police force by UN Special Rapporteur Philip Alston, the Government lambasted the law professor for “failing to understand the country’s peculiarities, recent political problems and the challenges it faces in its healing and reconciliation after the post-election violence.”

A then dumbstruck Police Commissioner Hussein Ali said of the Australian lawyer; “he only spent an hour with us. He was always in a hurry rushing off somewhere. It is not sufficient to write a report. Anyone can make an accusation... it does not take a brain surgeon to come up with one,” he had concluded then. That was 2009.

The chilling discovery of the death of three Kenyans last week supposedly in the hands of police officers has an ominous ring to the findings of Prof Alston.

What could have happened? Is the police service beyond salvage? Clearly, the impunity that Prof Alston talked about is still widespread as before in the police force. Those who killed the three knew they could somehow get away with it.

The Law Society of Kenya deserves commendation for taking the fight to the doorstep of the police’s top command.

But just how deep the rot in the police force is anybody's guess. It is easy to understand the anguish going through the head of the Inspector General of Police Joseph Boinnet in the aftermath of the eerie discovery.

But it will take more than a moralising disclaimer to repair the damage caused by the incident that led to the death of human rights lawyer Willie Kimani, Josephine Mwenda and Joseph Muiruri.

Evidently, the police have a long way to go to polish their soiled image. The death of any Kenyan in the hands of those who should protect them is regrettable.

It erodes the confidence people have in the institutions of Government.

But that goes beyond the real problem facing the police force. For so long, the focus had been on the hardware stuff; houses, motor vehicles, guns and ammunition.

Obviously, to expect a policeman who sleeps in a one-roomed tin structure, without the means of transport to get to a crime scene and with a G-3 rifle to give you the best of security is to stretch it too far.

For despite giving them the comfort they have, the police force continues to perform abysmally, mistreating those they swore to work for. Let us face it, is it that we expect too much from the police?

There are those who say that the reforms in the force have achieved little. True, as currently set up, the police force is incapable of safeguarding the interests of the tax-paying public.

What we have is a gang-like outfit modelled to work for the Big Man first and to serve the interests of the public second.

Just ask any ordinary Kenyan their experiences with the police. The apologists will like to think that the much-acclaimed reforms did nothing to shake up the foundation of one of the institutions with a gory past, largely inherited from British colonialists where salute for the king and a courtsy for the queen was the order of the day.

Community policing programmes did little to break the wall created by years of violence against civilians, human rights abuse and plain injustice meted with great abandon. Honestly, few Kenyans will find anything good to say about the police. Their encounter with the police is often laced with tales of intimidation and coercion.

Of course, there are those rare cases where the boys in blue have exceeded expectation, but that is just that.

To the police, policing is more about instilling fear of the heavens than assurance of law and order. At times, it seems as if in the eyes of the police, there is no innocent Kenyan. All are potential suspects.

Indeed, if the police even tried to resolve some of the simplest injustices that the common mwananchi has to live with each day, there would be something to celebrate.

I have had the occasion to meet with Kenyans who feel hard-done by the police. From the mama mboga to the hawker and the tout who for nothing else other than simply getting about with their livelihood find themselves on the wrong side of the boys in blue.

I will give you an example. A couple of months ago, I visited the main prisons in my county. Among the prisoners serving time there was a mama mboga.

She had fallen afoul of the law for selling her wares at a prohibited area, she told me. The police officers, I believe, were so thorough in their case that they secured a conviction for the poor woman.

“I have school-going children,” she told me... I need to be out of here please help me,” she pleaded with me. I highlighted her case in this column and an officer of the court approached me and asked for her details.

She is now free. The irony is that the police go out of their way to convict the small fish.