Police chief downplays graft among traffic officers
By Print Reporter, April 11, 2024Inspector-General of Police Japheth Koome has downplayed police involvement in taking bribes from motorists and instead called on officers not to be intimidated in discharging their duty.
On Tuesday evening, during a joint press conference on road safety at Transcom House, journalists asked him to come clean on what his office was doing to end the rampant vice on Kenyan roads. But the country’s top most police officer appeared to skirt around the question.
“I am asking my officers not to be intimidated by anyone but discharge their duties as required of them by the law,” Koome said.
The joint press conference was convened by Transport Cabinet Secretary Kipchumba Murkomen to address the rising road carnage.
Koome claimed that a senior media personality recently called him at 2.30am after he was arrested by the police and wanted him to intervene.
“I know many of you here in this room, and many of your colleagues always call me to help them when they have been arrested. Last night at 2.30am, a journalist who was arrested by the police called me, a very senior member of society, for me to ask the police to release him,” he said, and added that he did not ask the officers to set him free.
“Don’t attempt to call me. I won’t intervene,” Koome said.
The IG had been asked what his office was doing to arrest the rampant soliciting of bribes by police officers from motorists, especially public service vehicles.
As the IG sidestepped the question, Murkomen asked Kenyans to be patriotic enough, to confront the officers whenever they pick bribes, and ask them where they were taking the money.
“I am asking Kenyans to also take responsibility and tell the officers that they have seen them collect the bribes and question them on where they are taking the money,” he said.
When he was being vetted in November 2022 upon his nomination for the top police job, Koome pledged to stop bribery, saying the time had come to stamp out corruption in the National Police Service.
“This is a matter that has been in the public domain for long. We are at a point where we must stamp authority and eliminate corruption,” he told a joint committee of the National Assembly and the Senate.
Recently, Koome publicly confessed that corruption was rampant in the police service. The Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission (EACC) and other agencies have consistently ranked the police service as the most corrupt public institution.