Police oversight agencies Ipoa and the Internal Affairs Unit could be soon on collision course as a new proposed regulation elevated Ipoa over the unit, arming it with sprawling powers.
The Independent Police Oversight Authority Regulations 2024 is effectively putting the authority as supervisor of the unit with powers to order a stop to an ongoing probe the unit is doing, countermand its decisions or order a repeat investigation.
In the proposed rules, the authority is empowered to “at any time, review the decisions of the Internal Affairs Unit”, including auditing its operations.
The regulations do not get the force of law until they are subjected to parliamentary approval processes.
These include public participation by the National Assembly’s Committee on Delegated Legislation, before eventual consideration by the whole House.
The audit envisioned here includes reviewing IAU’s “standards and quality of investigations and action taken by the Unit, [as well as] the independence of the Unit in arriving at its decisions as envisaged under section 87 (11) of the National Police Service Act”.
The unit is a creation of the National Police Service and it is conceptualised as the internal mechanism of the service to hold rogue cops to account and only refer difficult cases to Ipoa.
This has created tension between IAU and Ipoa as the authority often views the unit as encroaching on its mandate and shielding cops from effective oversight.
The tension has sometimes been on public display, with Police IG Japheth Koome encouraging police to use their arms against violent criminals and taking swipes at Ipoa’s close monitoring.
“The arms you have are not decorations,” he said late last year during the memorial service for officers killed in the line of duty.
Sources at the IG’s office claim that once he came to office, Koome ordered restructuring of IAU operations, complete with an overhaul in the complaints management system, with most of them to be dealt with at the station level.
But the new regulation that will soon be the subject of public participation could soon ratchet up the tension as Ipoa will now have the final say on overall police discipline.
In oversighting the IAU, the regulations say that Ipoa may take over ongoing internal investigations by the Unit, and in case the unit had made a decision on the particular probe, undertake “an alteration, variation, modification or revision of a decision made by the Unit”.
Also, Ipoa is empowered to “keep and maintain records of all complaints received and acted upon by the Internal Affairs Unit regardless of where the complaint was first reported.
This is “for purposes of informing the execution of the Authority’s functions under the Act, these regulations and any other written law”.
Also, the authority shall keep and maintain a manual or automated Internal Affairs Unit complaints register.
In this respect, where a complaint is initially reported to the Internal Affairs Unit, the unit shall immediately and, in any event, not later than 30 days, forward details of the complaint to the authority for its recording.
Also, the Internal Affairs Unit shall keep the authority updated on the progress of any complaints it is handling.
“Where the Internal Affairs Unit resolves a complaint, it shall forward to the authority immediately, and in any event, not later than seven days, a full report of the manner the complaint was resolved and the attendant complaint file, including all the evidence collected and the action taken.”
