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{
    "id": 503209,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/503209/?format=api",
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    "content": "maintenance. So, the issue of citizens being asked to fuel police vehicles is a thing of the past. An area that requires greater attention now is the sophistication of the weapons that our police officers are using. That is an area where we need to up our game. We need to modernize the equipment and the weaponry that is available to our police officers, so that we can combat crime. Mr. Temporary Speaker Sir, all these successes, compared to the grave security challenge our country is facing today, appear to be a drop in the ocean. I am afraid that today the citizens of this country are living in fear in our towns and cities, counties, villages, at the coast, North Eastern and Western. The time has come for the security crisis to be declared a national disaster. We must come up with a comprehensive homeland security programme that is able to help us. That is why a Bill like this one, to me, is a great idea because research has shown that human resources, facilities and weapons; what one would call “security hardware” plays less than 20 per cent of the efficiency of policing and combating crime. Of course, this 20 per cent is important; you need people, vehicles and fire arms. However, more important, 80 per cent of the success in combating crime and insecurity is in what we call soft policing skills; the software of policing. This software includes a sound water tight intelligence gathering, analysis and usage system. Mr. Temporary Speaker, Sir, three things are important. There is the ability to gather intelligence on crime and ability to analyse that intelligence, so that you do not make wrong conclusions simply because suspicions have been reported somewhere. Thirdly, after gathering good intelligence, analyzing it and arriving at scientific conclusions, how you utilise that intelligence becomes very important. This Bill talks about those who will be recruited and given training and appropriate firearms. The curriculum should move away from the colonial type of mentality of a police force that uses brute force, command and control and subjugation, to the police science of looking at crime as a phenomenon of the human person. A police officer must be a top psychologist and counselor to crime victims. A police officer should be a modern, well educated and trained person that is able to combine the use of force and weaponry with the soft skills that we are talking about, including psychology and other aspects of policing. Mr. Temporary Speaker, Sir, it is because of this movement and the change in paradigm that the new Constitution of Kenya had to change the name of our police unit. Remember under the old constitution, it used to be called the Kenya Police Force (KPF). That was a colonial terminology. It was a police that had to use brute force to subjugate criminals, overpower them, overrun them and ravage them. That is why most people who became police officers did not require much education. Right now, the police service is recruiting graduates. As you know I used to be a professor in my earlier life before I mutated to what I am today. I know a few students who are now graduates in law who are chief inspectors of police. They were recruited directly into the police service. We need to rethink this so that the police service does not become a dumping ground of people who have not made it in life. The same applies to what is proposed in this Bill. A police reservist should not be any person who is available and willing to take The electronic version of the Senate Hansard Report is for information purposes only. A certified version of this Report can be obtained from the Hansard Editor, Senate."
}