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Armed robbery: Time to take swift action
2006-01-18 07:57:36
By Editor
There is absolutely no argument about this. It may be a little bit hard to explain this sudden surge of armed robberies in the country, but there is no disagreement that it has to be brought to a stop.
Innocent people are being killed, or maimed from the ongoing mayhem that has left the population wondering whether our police force is miserably failing to contain armed crime.
First we support President Jakaya Mrisho Kikwete in his decision to prise the police force off the mainstream Home Affairs Ministry.
We believe that the new entity, now called the Ministry of Public Safety and Security will solely deal with matters of law enforcement – an undertaking whose deficiency has now become the talk of the town.
We also believe that the government, through its own ways has found out, as well as paying attention to what wananchi have been crying about, on the widely held view of the existence of some form of détente between armed robbers and some members of the police force.
Even though concrete proof may be lacking, the widely held reason for the surge of the current crime wave has something to do with this transition period.
We suspect that hard-core criminals believe that their future could be uncertain as their ’collaborators’ in the police force could be replaced any time.
In the circumstances, we believe that the newly formed ministry should also mean a fresh start, or a much needed medium with which to instil a new lease of life to the police force. We thus offer some few suggestions.
First, confidence has to be restored to the general citizenry that they have a police force that they can rely upon.
The citizens have always been urged to be ’good citizens’ by reporting all suspicious acts, or any suspicious characters living in their midst.
Many have been responding to this call positively but many were also disappointed, as they claim that those suspects who have been so reported remained untouched or were released in questionable circumstances.
This has been eroding the confidence of wananchi towards their law enforcers. It is perhaps time to restore this lost confidence.
After coming into power in Kenya, President Mwai Kibaki appointed an army general as head of the country’s police force — as the situation of armed banditry had reached alarming proportions. We can do the same.
After all, such arrangement is not new in this country. We have several regional commissioners as well as dozens of district commissioners who were army officers.
The reason behind this was to enforce efficiency.
Besides, the current head of Prevention of Corruption Bureau (PCB) is a former army general, for similar reasons.
After this step, the government should move to ensure that information offered by the citizens about suspected bandits or acts of banditry is acted upon and fast.
A separate elite force made up of some elements of the rank and file of the police force – those with outstanding record of uprightness, as well as from the army should be established as an undercover law enforcing unit to deal with the crime wave as well as exposing the bad elements in the police force who collude with criminals, thereby tarnishing its image.
We think this is the best way to cleanse the police force, the necessity that was also aired by President Jakaya Kikwete when he visited the temporary head offices of the new Ministry for Public Safety and Security last week.
It could be the only way, as we all agree that the police force cannot cleanse itself.
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