Complaints over police killings and sexual assaults spike, IPOA warns

The number of complaints made against police officers to independent authorities has sharply risen in the past three years.

The National Police Service has in the past week come under fire following the abductions and killings of three people whose bodies were found dumped in the Ol Donyo Sabuk River, Machakos County.

International Justice Mission (IJM) lawyer Willie Kimani, his client Josephat Mwenda and their driver Joseph Muiruri were abducted moments after attending a case hearing at the Mavoko Law Courts. Mwenda had sued an Administration Police Officer for attempted murder.

Four officers— Fredrick Leliman, Stephen Chebulet, Silvia Wanjiku and Leonard Mwangi— are currently being held in connection with the killings that saw at least nine foreign missions call for the prosecution of those involved.

Information gathered from independent authorities points to a rising trend in the number of deaths and injuries of people in police custody, besides other complaints over misuse of office, harassment, assault and sexual offences.

Data obtained from the Independent Policing Oversight Authority (IPOA), for instance, shows it has received a total of 5,041 complaints since it was established.

IPOA was established in November 2011, and its board sworn into office in June 2012. The authority, which is mandated to conduct investigations on police misconduct, inspect police premises and monitor police operations, among other duties, started full operations in January 2014.

According to IPOA’s records, the number of complaints against officers rose from 594 in 2012/13, to 860 in 2013/14 financial year before spiking to 1,792 in 2014/15. The figure as at April this year stood at 1,825 complaints, with Nairobi County making up for the highest number, at 37.46 per cent.

So far, 35 cases have been recommended to the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions for action, with at least 19 matters being handled by the courts.

Data gleaned from IPOA’s annual reports also points to concerns over the “indicative rising trend of deaths and serious injuries of persons while in police custody”.

Take for instance its 2013/14 annual report, which documents 860 complaints received by the authority. Of these, 50 cases were on deaths caused by police action, 176 on harassment by police and 60 on serious injuries sustained by people in the hands of police. The authority also received 116 death notifications from 55 police stations during the same period.

The highest number of notifications came from police stations in Nairobi, with Karen, Githurai, Kilimani, Pangani and Soweto reporting four notifications each. Those that reported three notifications each were Shauri Moyo, Ngong, Githurai Kimbo, Industrial Area, Kahawa Sukari and Huruma police stations.

The data contrasts that of 2012/13   when IPOA received 594 complaints. The authority received 48 notifications from police at the time, 25 of which were related to deaths in custody while 23 to injuries.

At the Commission on Administrative Justice, about 15 per cent of all complaints against public institutions are against the police service.

Data from CAJ shows that 14,235 complaints out of the total 108,920 handled by the commission in 2015 were against the police. This represents 13.07 per cent of the total number of complaints received and is an increase from 10,312 filed against the service in 2014 and 2,340 in 2013.

“Registering such numbers of complaints in a force of 70,000 clearly shows there is a problem,” says African Centre for Security and Strategic Studies Director Captain (rtd) Simiyu Werunga. But it is the impact this has on the force that is of even greater concern, says Werunga.

“It kills the morale of honest hardworking officers and impacts negatively on those who want to genuinely serve the nation,” he notes. Werunga says the actions of rogue officers undermine initiatives such as community policing among a public suspicious of the force and creates hurdles in the way of the police achieving its objectives of fighting crime.

“You cannot deliver services to a people that don’t have faith in you and believe you are part of the problem. This makes the work of the police rather difficult because they are unable to work with the public, which is a crucial partner in the fight against crime,” he says.