Policing with a human face

Abstract

This essay was written when the Government of Kenya was undertaking what it reckoned were radical reforms in the country’s police force. For a long time the police force (nowadays the police service) has been the least trusted public institution in Kenya. The point is made in most of the annual reports by GfK: Verein – The Global Study on Trust in Professions– that came out over the course of the second decade of the twenty–first century. And so the Kenyan Government came up with a Revised Police Reforms Program Document 2015–20182 and went out on a highly publicized marketing of the transformations in the institution.3 Citizens who only knew the brutal side of the police were admonished to see the policemen and -women as human beings whose job was to protect them and keep the peace. The article, a retelling of the experiences of its author, sought to engage this new image of the police that was being promoted vigorously by the state. It was unsuccessfully submitted to the country’s leading dailies for publication.