EACC wants police who solicit bribes dismissed on the spot

Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission (EACC) has proposed that officers caught demanding bribes from members of the public should be sacked immediately besides being taken to court.

EACC Deputy Chief Executive Abdi Mohamud disclosed that they had taken the new approach as part of the strategy to fight rampant corruption in the National Police Service (NPS).

Mohamud told People Daily that once EACC arrests an officer, they make a recommendation to the National Police Service Commission (NPSC) and the Inspector General of Police to summarily dismiss him or her from the service as they proceed with charges in court.

“It is no longer going to be business as usual. Those arrested over corruption will immediately lose their jobs as the prosecution of the case goes on,” he said.

Asked what would happen to officers who are sacked but go on to be cleared in court, Mohamud said such individuals would have to leave the service as their integrity would have already been questioned.

Mohamud, a former senior detective with the Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI), blamed the rising complaints against police over bribery on impunity and pressure from seniors on their juniors to bring to them what in police parlance is called “returns”.

“Because they have realised that no action or very little action would be taken against them, they have developed impunity. And this is compounded by the pressure from their seniors to collect bribes, known as returns, from the public on their behalf,” Mohamud said.

200 cases

Since the beginning of the year, Mohamud said, they had forwarded 40 files of cases involving police officers to the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions (ODPP) recommending prosecution.

And out of a total of 3,000 complaints received from members of the public over corruption, 200 of them are about bribery.

Mohamud spoke days after EACC arrested Officer Commanding Ruai Police Station (OCS) Duncan Otieng for allegedly demanding bribes from bar patrons who had been arrested on accusations of being drunk and disorderly.

It was reported that on Friday night, officers from Ruai Police Station visited Fun City club in Utawala and randomly arrested the patrons without a reasonable cause.

“The revellers were taken to Ruai Police Station where they were put in police cells until the following day, Saturday, when the OCS ordered each of them to pay Sh5,000 bribe in order to be released unconditionally,” said EACC CEO Twalib Mbarak.

Otieng is said to have threatened the detainees that they would spend the entire weekend behind bars if they did not comply and face charges of being drunk and disorderly on Monday.

The OCS was arrested while receiving the bribes and was processed at Integrity Centre Police Station on Saturday night.

Mohamud has implored members of the public to volunteer such incidents to EACC to enable them to crack down on offenders.

“We can only effectively do away with this kind of behaviour if members of the public report cases to our offices. This is one of the reasons we have decided to open regional offices so that people can easily make their complaints,” Mohamud says.

Small money

The deputy CEO disclosed that the anti-graft agency had intensified its crackdown on public officers engaging in what it calls small-scale corruption.

He says that though the officers ask for little money ranging between Sh100 and Sh5,000, cumulatively they end up collecting millions of shillings in bribes.

Belonging to this category according to Mohamud, are police officers whom he said have appeared to have become bolder while soliciting for bribes.

“Take for example officers manning a road, from where they solicit for about Sh100 from matatus and a figure ranging between Sh500 and Sh3,000 from private motorists. Any time we have made an ambush raid, we have managed to recover from the officers amount of money ranging from Sh20,000 and Sh50,000. That means that though they take small money, cumulatively they go home with good money at the end of the day,”said Mohamud.