Here is negative publicity police does not need

Talk is cheap, and even the best-laid plans can, and do often go awry. And this is to do with the inconsistency in the Kenya police force.

How can a department be saintly one week and completely unrecognisable in another? As Internal Security Minister George Saitoti says, not all serving officers are necessarily sane or even up to the task of being a law enforcement agent, but reports of a 40-year-old refugee being admitted to Ifo Refugee Hospital, after a reported gang rape by officers in uniform is a page straight out of a Stone Age horror.

And for the first time, the commanding officer at Dadaab was honest enough not to immediately issue the lightning denial Kenyans are used to, but was methodical about ensuring her hospitalisation, collecting evidence and identifying the accused staffers.

Such reports of brutal, police assaults are frequent in countries ravaged by civil war, ethnic strife and during disarmament drives. They were denied across Samburu, Isiolo, Mt Elgon, Kuria and Mandera, as well as several other places teeming with illegally-acquired guns. Many such assaults are said to take place during so-called amnesty periods, when communities are urged to voluntarily surrender arms or risk a police ‘operation’.

Cobwebs of shame

Whether the Hagardera bush assault happened or not is neither here nor there. Why do such reports persist? Her cry of anguish was about betrayal by people into whose arms she had run for protection. It is the stain such incidents leave on the integrity of a department that is firmly in the public limelight for past misdeeds and also at the forefront of institutions that have endorsed and embraced radical reform.

Let not a few unprofessional agents blot out the light streaking into a uniformed formation that has over the years acquired too many cobwebs of shame. We hope the authorities get to the bottom of this matter and an intensive re-education of officers on fundamental human rights is undertaken.