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The era when police bosses in Nairobi used to sit in their fancy offices waiting for reports from their juniors and members of the public is now long gone, according to the county police boss Adamson Bungei.

As part of his strategy to effectively fight crime in the city, Bungei has instructed all the sub county Police Commanders, popularly known as OCPDs, Officers Commanding Police Stations (OCS) and Divisional Criminal Investigations Officers (DCIOs) to leave the comfort of their offices and move out to the field.

The city boss also discloses that he has ensured that officers from the Kenya Police Service (KPS), commonly referred to as regular, work in harmony with their colleagues from the Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI) to end the bad blood that had previously existed between the two.

“I have instructed all the senior officers to get involved in patrols so that they can be able to reach out to our customers (the public) and clearly understand their problems,” Bungei told the People Daily at the weekend.

Bungei, who has previously headed the Buru Buru and Central Police divisions, says his decision to introduce the community outreach programme has already borne fruit as it has seen drastic reduction in crime.

The presence of senior officers in the field, he says, has helped identify some of the pressing challenges faced by their juniors as well as reduced cases where the latter ended up being compromised by criminals.

Bungei says the heavy police presence in all corners of the city has been effective in controlling the emergence of armed youths who were terrorising Nairobi residents early this year.

So ruthless were the armed boys that they ruthlessly moved around all parts of the city on motor bikes, armed with either pistols or crude weapons such as knives and pangas, terrorising and robbing city residents at will.

“The boys were as daring as they were to send out signals that they could take over the city and make it a city of crime. But all these are now history as we have managed to control them,” Bungei says with a smile.

In order to contain the daylight muggings that had become the order of the day in the Central Business District (CBD), Bungei says his team held consultative meetings with Nairobi governor Johnson Sakaja at which they agreed to form a joint team to deal with insecurity.

Consequently, some officers from the county’s Directorate of Inspectorate (city askaris), were identified and allocated to  particular streets and zones in the city.

The askaris’ efforts are complemented by those of officers in uniform and civilians assigned to patrol particular areas.