Boinnet: A few bad elements must not dent police image

Inspector General of police Joseph Boinnet

He has been under pressure following the heinous killings of a human rights lawyer and his client and their driver. He has however resisted pressure by declaraing that the undoing of a few elements within the National Police Service must never be used to demonize the entire service as rogue. Our senior writer MWANIKI MUNUHE held a one-on-one interview with Inspector General of police Joseph Boinett and filed the following report.

It is is now over a year since you were sworn into office as the Inspector General of Police. What are your successes, failures, challenges and lessons?

I came into this office from a slightly different sector. I started my career as a police officer over 30 years ago then went on to do slightly different things. I am now back into the mainstream police as IG. When I came in, I found a lot of good things and a few others that needed to be done in a different way. We have maintained a good relationship between the Kenya Defence Forces (KDF), the National Intelligence Service (NIS) and other national security agencies. We have made quite significant successes especially in minimising terrorist attacks. We have a contributed, in a large extent, to creation of what we consider multi-agency teams.

What I would consider work in progress is ensuring a good working relationship between various components that constitutes the National Police Service (NPS). Before I came in, there was a bit of difficulty between regular police, administration police and DCI. We have worked hard to bring about unity and we are succeeding. We are not there yet but we are succeeding. These units are socialised differently in training. To bring them under one command and expect them to work very well together at an instance would, in my view, be expecting too much. That is work in progress.

The recent killing of a lawyer, his client and their driver has captured the imaginations of Kenyans and indeed the global citizenry. What do you know so far?

That is a matter of very grave concern to me. It’s a troubling experience. We have four police officers in custody and are looking for three more individuals whom we have very strong reason to believe are in one way or another connected to the unfortunate killings. We are particularly eager to know who drove that taxi and we’ve worked hard using our own resources and those of other partners to find out who that individual is.

I wish to also state that it is important to distinguish the actions of rogue individuals among us in the service and not create the impression that it is an institutionalsed behaviour in the police because it is not. We’ve been accused of maintaining killer squads. There are no killer squads in the NPS. What should not be lost to anybody in this country is that there are just too many guns in the wrong hands. Quite often, officers are forced to use deadly force to subdue deadly criminals. Quite often, its criminals who get shot while they engage officers in gun fire. It’s not something we love doing, it is not like we love shooting somebody for sport. But sometimes we are forced to use force to protect life and property. The law is clear on when deadly force can be used. When officers refuse to follow that law we take appropriate actions as well.

There appears to be a pattern of extra-judicial killings involving police squads. Why would police officers arrest and not make bookings on the occurrence book?

There are no killer squads within the service at all. What we have are officers excising their constitutional roles to protect life and property. Whenever they are compelled to use deadly force, our regulations demands that it must be just. In any event where an officer goes beyond those limits, they expose themselves to serious sanctions. You say that there is some pattern of people being picked and later on found dead. We have institutions that deal with those complaints. We have our own internal affairs unit. Citizens are free to approach the unit and complain. We have the Independent Police Oversight Authority (Ipoa) and a complaints desk within within the DCI, Kenya Police and Administration Police. Kenyans are free to visit any of those units. Unless I have specifics, it becomes difficult to answer that question but I still maintain we have no killer squads within the service. What we have are elements that do not want to follow the correct procedure but we always hold them to account. If some lawyer makes a mistake and ends up in court, do we condemn the entire Law Society of Kenya as being composed of criminals? We hold individuals to account.

Since you are responsible for the service, are you prepared to take responsibility for this systemic failures by police officers under you? What form of responsibility are you prepared to take if any?

Which systemic failures? I don’t think there is any systemic failure just because a few individuals have been accused of murdering innocent citizens. I don’t understand where I have failed. If I am accused of having failed on the job, then that’s a different matter. But if people have broken the law and have been held to account and processes commenced to deal with them, where have we failed?

Majority of Kenyans feel that reforms in the police service have stalled. Is this by design, incompetence or that the service has simply become lazy and careless?

Not at all. The police reforms train is still on course -- it’s neither stalled nor gone a drift. Police reforms are at various levels and there are various levels of oversight. The NPS Act requires that the Ministry (of Interior) oversights reforms in the police at that level. We also have all entities interested in reforming police service come together. On our own part, we have made significant contributions by ensuring reforms succeed. We have even introduced what we consider as a transformative process focusing on soft skills. The security of every citizen is responsibility of every Kenyan. It is important to understand and appreciate that security is the foundation upon which everything else is built.