This archive report was first published on 14 September 2019.
On September 14, 2019, KWENDO OPANGA emphasized the need for Parliament to constitute a committee to review the Kenya Police Service and chart a new chapter in its transformation.
The police service is a critical element in Kenya's governance and enforcement of the rule of law. However, there is no law when policemen and policewomen violate the law, and the service exists to enforce the law, prevent crime, apprehend criminals, and arraign them.
Increasingly, police are fatally shooting colleagues or civilians or committing suicide, pointing to a serious institutional problem that calls for serious intervention and redress.
Several police officers were accused of robbing a bank and trafficking in counterfeit currency, highlighting the alarming and escalating trajectory of police committing violent crimes.
Witnesses to anarchy include regular police officers responding to cries of help and commotion, only to realize that the fleeing suspects are their Administration Police colleagues.
Victims of robbery freeze when reporting their ordeal at a police station, as the man behind the desk is the very same fellow who robbed and tortured them at gunpoint.
Armed Administration Police officers storm a police station to free their boss arrested by their colleagues for breaking the traffic code, and police and prison wardens hire out standard issue firearms to criminals and rent out unmarked cars to the underworld for use in crime.
Government figures show that more than 34 per cent of crimes reported to police were committed by serving officers in 2016, and there was a 102 per cent jump in 2018 in the number of crimes involving the police.
Put differently, nobody knows how to connive, organize, and mobilize to defeat justice better than the police, making the commission of crime by police officers insidious and heinous.
