Police reforms largely misdirected, focusing more on the hard rather than software attitude change, rendering it theoretical rather than practical, activists have said.
A group of civil society activists on Friday said the process has been misunderstood with huge budget expenditure focused on police heavy equipment.
They complained that no similar amount of effort directed at changing the mindset and attitude of officers.
They spoke during a policing conference reviewing the nine years of police reforms.
A breakdown of the 2019-20 reform budget run by the Interior Ministry for the presented to the gathering at Crown Plaza in Nairobi by the Institute of Economic Affairs showed over 70 per cent of the money has been used to buy the hardware such as Armored Personnel Carriers among others.
"These are at the expense of soft reform such as training the officers on changing their approach to handling the common citizens and good relationships," Peter Kiama, the Executive director of IMLU, said.
George Kegoro, the executive director of Kenya Human Rights Commission, said that while policing reform required a considerable investment in upgrading the hardware of the law enforcement agencies, there has not been enough effort to implement remedies prescribed by reform commissions such as Waki and Kriegler commissions.
"In the past, like in 2008, it was found that politicians and people of influence mainly used private outfits such as criminal gangs to perpetuate political violence. However, in this era of reforms, we have witnessed police officers themselves being used to perpetuate political violence without any lawful justification," he said.
Instances like the cases where officers reportedly committed illegal violence in places considered in 2017 to be politically unfriendly to the state like Kisumu and took body bags demonstrate that a reformed police of 2018 was not any different from the unreformed one of 2008, he said.
"The steps we have made are largely in normative terms rather than in practical terms," he said, adding that as much as the government tout the reform milestones, the police officers are "now even engaging in violence directly, especially in the interest of the political interests."
The participants also decried the increasing police intolerance to peaceful demonstrations, saying there was a rising tendency for officers to violently disperse demonstrators, violating the law that allow freedom of assembly.
The constitution allows citizens to peaceably and unarmed participate in street protests, picket and present petition to public authorities. They only need to notify the police to ensure their security.
Police officers have dispersed public protests by firing tear gas canisters, even when peaceful.
At the same time, ranking officers such as OCSs who attended the conference recounted they have to contend with acutely limited resources availed to them to respond to the needs of the people in their jurisdiction.
For example, Isaac Gathiaka, who is the OCS for Garbatula said that while the government buys 450 liters of fuel for police vehicles in his station per month, the people they are serving have to wait longer or even be asked to chip to respond to their concerns.
"The area is around 9000 square kilometers and we fuel in Meru, approximately 80km away. This fuel gets depleted almost in two weeks, meaning that vehicles get grounded undermining our response."
Evans Momanyi, an OCS, said the government gives OCSs Sh3,000 for stationery after every three months, yet this hardly finishes the first month."
In the time where the P3 forms are to be given for free among other services, our ability to serve is largely undermined.
