‘Fake cop’ saga should be treated as serious subversion

By Okiya Omtatah

The six-member probe team appointed by the National Police Service Commission to investigate the Joshua Waiganjo saga should not be thrown off course by the crimes the alleged ‘impostor’ is suspected to have committed.

These should be left to the Criminal Investigations Department. The Police Service already prosecutes many from within its rank and file for committing crimes outside their own code of conduct and in total disregard of their mandate to suppress crime.

Even bona fide officers commit crimes, be it forging documents, taking and giving bribes, raping, kidnapping, looting and pillaging, or carrying out extrajudicial executions.

Secondly, people do not impersonate police officers so as to enforce the law but to breach it under the cover of the police uniform. Waiganjo should not stand out in any way if he committed the alleged crimes while in active ‘service’. What must stand out, however, is the fact that whereas ordinary police impostors usually operate from outside the service, Waiganjo did so from within. Ordinary impostors never take up such a senior position as the one in which Waiganjo allegedly masqueraded. 

Infiltrating the police is no mean feat. Every month the Police Service conducts a headcount, called the Nominal Roll, where all the personnel are counted. The exercise covers both police officers and their civilian support staff like registry clerks, messengers and secretaries. It is initiated at the grassroots level, by the officer in charge of a police station or post, who counts and draws up a list of all people working at the centre, and forwards the record to the division commander.

The division commander then scrutinises and approves records from all centres under the division and forwards them to the provincial commander, who in turn audits, approves and forwards the records for the province to the Commissioner of Police, through the Director of Personnel based at Police Headquarters. Was Joshua Waiganjo accounted for as a bona fide police officer on the Nominal Rolls prepared over the years by the Rift Valley Provincial Police Officer?

Kenyans must be told who recruited Waiganjo, who gave him orders, who promoted him, and how he was able to impersonate a police officer for so long, and within the top echelons of the service. How was Waiganjo able to organise, plan, raise funds, communicate, recruit, train and operate in relative safety? The probe team must not just leave no stone unturned; it must look under every upturned stone and tell us all there is.

Reports that Waiganjo had loads of money from unexplained sources, and that he gifted two senior officers, namely, the former Police Commissioner Mathew Iteere and suspended Rift Valley Provincial Police Officer John M’mbijiwe, a Toyota Landcruiser each, point to an elaborate plan to subvert the police service.

They lead me to conclude that Waiganjo was a mole planted by powerful forces behind the criminal activities in the Rift Valley, especially the rampant commercial cattle rustling, to carry out special assignments, including being their eyes and ears.

Infiltrating the armed forces, the police, and other institutions of the State is subversion, and an important tool for criminal elements to advance their nefarious activities. Since these institutions are legitimate in the eyes of the people, they provide criminal groups the opportunity to do many things to achieve their goals. The infiltration of security forces can give them tactical advantage by accessing privileged information about the government’s capabilities including training and weapons, and how they plan to address the group’s activities. Infiltration also provides the opportunity to plant false information, lead the Government to misallocate resources such as happened in the Baragoi massacre of police officers by cattle rustlers, to steal funds, weapons, equipment, and other resources, and ultimately aid in weakening and de-legitimising the Government and its institutions.

The Waiganjo script ends neatly on a high note because he is also alleged to be married to a woman who is a police corporal attached to the Anti Stock Theft Unit.

The writer is a human rights defender and Ford-Kenya Nairobi Senate candidate