IPOA secures convictions for 34 rogue officers over abuse
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The Independent Police Oversight Authority (IPOA) says it has managed to have at least 34 rogue police officers convicted by the courts over human rights abuse and extra judicial killings while 230 active cases are waiting for judgment in courts .
Ipoa chairman Isaac Hassan and CEO Elema Halake who held a meeting with staff and stakeholders in Meru on Tuesday said IPOA has been keen to provide civilian oversight against the police to push them work under professional guidelines and upholds the rule of law.
“Despite us only being in nine counties one of the reforms is to decentralize our offices to all the 47 counties. 34 cases of police misconduct have been investigated by IPOA and prosecuted by the Office of the Director of Public Prosecution (ODPP) and were convicted,” he said.
He noted the Blue code silence by police is a challenge to IPOA investigators hidering the institution from getting information or evidence from their colleagues police officers.
Ipoa investigations
“Its challenging because there is always that factor where the police want to protect one another during Ipoa investigations they don’t want to spoil their name. Sometimes when our staff go for inquiries, the OCPD or fellow police officers are not cooperative. Sometimes it is even hard to get a simple duty roaster. On this, we have talked to the Inspector General of the police and we anticipate positive changes,” he added.
He said in December last year, there were several complaints about abductions and forced disappearances but the Inspector General of Police denied the allegations claiming were not conducted by the security officers.
“We investigate and when we get a clue that the abductors were wearing hoods, masks and driving vehicles with fake number plates and who take their abductees to unknown places and not in the police station as. It become very hard to investigate these allegations within the forces ,” he said .
Support staff
Isaac also regretted that they have a shortage of more than 500 investigating officers and other support staff to carry their mandates effectively.
“IPOA has few staff whereas it is supposed to oversight a police force which was established years ago with a work force of 120,000 officers, making it hard to conduct investigation in the whole Country. You can imagine the scope of work. We have 284 staff. We want investigating staff of 600 and currently we only have 77 investigators. The challenge is there is burnout. We are already overworked,” he said .
He said they are going to seek intervention through the parliament for allocation of enough funds. He lamented that need to meet the committee on administration of Justice and national security, and demand for more funding to help the IPOA provide effective and adequate service delivery across the country .
“Last budget the office was denied funds to employ 23 more staff, yet there will be a recruitment of 10, 000 more police officers,” he said.
He said a lot of Kenyans have filed several reports against police officer’s misconduct in bulk from Nairobi, Nakuru and Kisumu.
“Our work is to ensure there are no extra judicial killings and unfair arrest,” he added.
Halake the CEO added that holding police accountable is their day in mandate.
“Our offices are accessible. We will make a case to parliament for decentralization of our offices to regions,” he said.