Are police officers sleeping on the job?

By PETER WANYONYI

Life is cheap in Kenya. It doesn’t matter who you are or what your station in life is, we just do not seem to take life seriously. Villagers quietly laugh at city-dwellers who have come to expect security services from the State and its unreliable police force. In the village, it is the neighbours that save you when thugs come calling, not the police.

Bullets

Under former Police Commissioner Mathew Iteere, the Police force — already a bad joke — turned into something of a farce. Violent attacks across the country became normal, from Mombasa to Tana River to Nairobi. Matters were so bad that rumour had it the United Nations was paying its Nairobi-based staff a “risk allowance” for posting them in such an insecure place. But Iteere didn’t see anything wrong with that — his own police officers — 50-odd of them — were massacred by bandits in an operation gone bad in Kenya’s northern badlands. Indeed, some calculated that Kenya was losing 200 police officers a year to criminals bullets.

Citizens

It, therefore, came as a pleasant surprise when Iteere was retired, and a brand new police boss — with a brand new title, too — was installed into office. Inspector-General Kimaiyo should have been a clean broom that reformed the police, changing their modus operandi of some of them from “shoot any citizens you fancy” to something a little more civilised.

Maiming

This has not happened, as the soaring rates of violent crime across the country shows. In Western Kenya, thugs held entire villages hostage for hours, slashing and maiming villagers at will. Police were summoned — but they didn’t show up. Are the police trying to suggest that citizens are on their own? Villagers should find ways of protecting themselves, but at least they now know who blame.