We all have a role in fight against crime

There is a significant appreciation of the challenges our security agencies confront on daily basis in the fight against petty and organised crime. These challenges are both internal in terms of poor equipment and low morale and external in regard to new crime trends which are fluid and difficult to detect let alone defuse.

But Kenyans are increasingly getting frustrated and logistical and grudgingly beginning to accept that our security agencies could have as well lost the war to keep the country safe. This realisation is being reinforced everyday as images of Kenyans fleeing their homes begin to populate newspaper pages and television screens; images of hapless peasants—their entire household items on rickety handcarts— trekking to safety, hopelessness etched on their faces.

On the same television screens will be images of top security personnel reading incoherent statements about ongoing investigations and issuing ineffectual threats to criminals, who they persuasively claim are being supported by sections of the political class. This unenlightened discourse begins to take an ominous dimension when Opposition politicians use insecurity to score political points; capitalising on the misfortunes of crime victims to portray the ruling Jubilee administration in bad light and militantly challenging its ability to govern effectively.

And when leaders from across the political divide politicise the issue of growing insecurity, interventions to mitigate become clouded by political rhetoric and attempts to seek consensus on the way forward are distorted by bad faith. So while we agree that we must examine why we have failed to contain the rising number of criminal attacks on innocent Kenyans, recriminations are not helpful especially when they are not structured and poorly framed.

Innocent Kenyans have been under sustained attack, if not by the Al Shabaab terror group, then by sympathetic criminal militia or common outlaws capitalising on loopholes in our security systems. However, we are confounded by the fact that security agencies have been reactive rather than proactive in the face of this sustained threat. Often, the knee-jerk response within the Kenya Police Service has been to transfer or sack police officers in the crime zone after which "security is beefed up". Because these interventions have been superficial and meant to pacify the public, the raiders have been able to repeatedly attack these areas, the beefed up security notwithstanding.

These attacks have not just diluted public confidence in the police and the government that has been mandated by law to protect them, they have also undermined efforts to unite neighbouring communities.

In the more urban areas of Lamu County and other parts of the Coastal region, the attacks by outlaws have begun to take an ominously ethnic dimension with some non-native communities living under constant threat. The exodus of these communities from the Coast region is a testament of the dangerously high levels of intolerance within our communities.

 

The law allows Kenyans to live, work, do business and purchase land and property anywhere in the republic and all leaders must walk the talk on this matter. It is not enough for the police to enforce such laws—the public must be educated about this sacrosanct right that all Kenyans enjoy.

Nevertheless, the shortage of personnel in law enforcement agencies must be addressed; we must boost the number of our police officers to help them meet the growing and complex challenges of security management. For Kenyans to have confidence in the police force, officers must be accorded the best professional training where greater effort is placed on community policing for intelligence gathering to be more effective.

That is why the police recruitment exercise such as the one that is ongoing must be fair and non-discriminatory.

While the police have been mandated to keep Kenya secure, the onus is on each Kenyan to help them accomplish this complex task.