VZCZCXRO7174
RR RUEHROV
DE RUEHNR #2974/01 2001245
ZNR UUUUU ZZH
R 191245Z JUL 07
FM AMEMBASSY NAIROBI
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC 1191
INFO RUCNIAD/IGAD COLLECTIVE
RUEHDS/AMEMBASSY ADDIS ABABA 9455
RUEHDR/AMEMBASSY DAR ES SALAAM 5388
RUEHDJ/AMEMBASSY DJIBOUTI 4788
RUEHKM/AMEMBASSY KAMPALA 2168
RUEHKH/AMEMBASSY KHARTOUM 1328
RUEHLO/AMEMBASSY LONDON 2348
RUEHFR/AMEMBASSY PARIS 2285
RHMFIUU/CDR USCENTCOM MACDILL AFB FL
RHMFIUU/CJTF HOA

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 04 NAIROBI 002974 
 
SIPDIS 
 
SENSITIVE 
SIPDIS 
 
LONDON AND PARIS FOR AFRICA WATCHERS 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: ASIG KCRM KE PREL PTER
SUBJECT: KENYA POLICE: REFORMS APLENTY, BUT PERFORMANCE LAGS 
 
REF: A. NAIROBI 01926 
     ¶B. NAIROBI 02215 
 
¶1. (SBU) Summary:  The Kibaki administration has implemented 
significant reforms of the Kenya Police Service and greatly 
increased its resources.  The worst police abuses of the 
Moi-era have been eradicated.  However, reforms and increased 
resources have not yet yielded a dramatic rise in police 
effectiveness.  Public anger over persistent high rates of 
violent crime remains a top election issue in Kenya.   End 
Summary. 
 
Background: Kenya Police Service & Administration Police 
 
¶2. (U)  The Kenya Police Service (KPS) is older than Kenya 
itself.  KPS traces its lineage to the private security guard 
force formed in 1887 to protect warehouses in Mombasa owned 
by the Imperial British East Africa Company.  These security 
guards later formed the nucleus of a police force under the 
British East African Protectorate, established in 1895.  The 
force policed urban areas and protected railway installations 
and railway workers.  Kenyan police fought alongside Kenyan 
soldiers in both World War I (against German Tanganyika) and 
World War II (against Italian Somaliland and Italian-occupied 
Ethiopia).  Today the force numbers about 40,000 officers, 
divided into ten functional units and distributed throughout 
the country's eight provinces.  Among the most important 
units are the Anti-Terrorism Police Unit (Kenya's Muslim 
organizations regularly call for its disbandment), General 
Services Unit (GSU -- paramilitary police, once notorious as 
brutal enforcers for KANU, the former ruling party), Criminal 
Investigation Department (CID), Airport Police, Traffic 
Police (worst reputation for corruption of all units), 
Anti-Stock Theft (responsible for curbing cattle rustling in 
pastoral areas), Tourism Police, the Diplomatic Police 
(operational, but not formally established in law), and the 
recently upgraded with U.S. assistance Marine Police Unit 
(MPU). 
 
¶3. (SBU) The KPS is headed by the Commissioner of Police 
(CP), who is appointed directly by the President without 
consultation with the legislature.  The incumbent, 
Major-General Hussein Ali, is an ethnic Somali appointed by 
President Kibaki in 2004.  His appointment caused some 
consternation among senior KPS officers who resented an army 
general being placed in command over them.  (Since he assumed 
the post, Ali was promoted from Brigadier-General to 
Major-General, indicating he continues to enjoy strong 
support within the military.)  Ali is known for a very 
brusque style.  He has publicly castigated KPS as 
dysfunctional and expressed his intent to reform it.  He does 
not consult with senior KPS officers.  He has alienated major 
security sector donors (UK officials refuse to work with 
him).  Ali is strongly supported by Kenya's first lady, Lucy 
Kibaki.  For policy coordination purposes, the CP reports to 
the Minister of State for Internal Security and Provincial 
Administration in the Office of the President.  However, Ali 
is known to insist strongly that he answers only to the 
President. 
 
¶4. (U) The Administration Police (AP) is an entirely separate 
civilian security service from KPS.  Its origins lie in the 
colonial-era Tribal Police.  While KPS secured the railway 
routes, urban centers and settler-populated areas, the tribal 
police enforced often unpopular colonial laws in "native 
areas," providing the muscle behind British-appointed 
"village headmen."  Today, the AP numbers about 18,000.  It 
is deployed in every administrative center in the country, 
but is concentrated in frontier districts, especially along 
the insecure Somali, Ethiopian and Sudanese borders.  The AP 
is directly under the control of the Minister for Internal 
Security and Provincial Administration.  The AP exists to 
enforce the rule of the central government-appointed 
Provincial Commissioners and the District Commissioners who 
serve under them.  Their tasks include border security, VIP 
protection, guarding government installations, anti-banditry 
patrols in sparsely populated regions and quelling violence 
between warring communities.  They have a paramilitary 
structure and training regime.  AP officers have arrest 
authority but no detention or prosecution authority.  AP 
 
NAIROBI 00002974  002 OF 004 
 
 
officers make arrests and then hand over suspects to KPS. 
This report focuses on the KPS rather than the AP. 
 
Police Status When Kibaki Government Came to Power 
 
¶5. (U) In early 2003 the Kibaki administration inherited from 
the Moi regime a corrupt, inefficient and thoroughly 
politicized KPS and an AP in only slightly better shape. 
Public opinion polls regularly listed KPsF#Q;QCZQ[$^stitution in Kenya (although the judiciary was not far 
behind).  The AP got higher marks.  Kenyan victims of violent 
criminal attacks feared to report incidents to the police. 
Those who did often found that the predatory attentions of 
the police exacerbated the original crime.  KPS's major 
problems included: 
 
-- Poor infrastructure: Decrepit offices and police barracks 
built in the 1960s with little or no subsequent maintenance. 
Three families crowded into a tiny apartment.  No housing at 
all for KPS officers assigned to rural Kenya. 
 
-- Low Pay:  Pay for rank & file officers well below a living 
wage, an open invitation to corruption. 
 
-- Insufficient numbers:  UNDP recommends a ratio of one 
police officer for every 400 citizens.  In 2003, the ratio in 
Kenya was 1:900. 
 
-- Politicization:  The police (especially the GSU), were 
openly used by the Moi regime to harass, intimidate, torture 
and kill political opponents (as documented in our human 
rights reports from the era).  Moi's allies in government and 
business were not simply above the law, they were able to 
direct police to act against their political or commercial 
rivals.  (NOTE:  The worst human rights abuses under the Moi 
regime were committed by the Special Branch, whose members 
were drawn from KPS, though Special Branch was not a formal 
unit of KPS.  The Kibaki government disbanded the Special 
Branch and replaced it with a professional intelligence 
organization.) 
 
-- Poor Command & Control:  A politically well-connected 
policeman could have considerably more effective power than 
his commander.  Commanders could be overruled at any time by 
politicians and their friends.  Well-connected subordinates 
could arrange transfers and promotions without the knowledge 
of their superiors. 
 
-- Poor professional standards, lack of training and skills, 
lack of equipment. 
 
-- Poor Community Relations:  The public avoided the police, 
who were regarded as "thieves in uniform." 
 
-- Criminal Activities:  Police were widely known to 
moonlight as robbers and to rent out their weapons to robbers 
in return for a fee and a share of the loot. 
 
¶6. (SBU) Some of the ills of KPS are due to colonial era 
policies that the leadership of independent Kenya opted to 
retain.  The British maintained a policy of not assigning 
police to their home areas and of rotating police every few 
years.  It was believed (with good reason) that a Kikuyu 
policeman might refuse to evict fellow Kikuyu from their 
lands or to enforce the hated "hut tax" on them.  However, 
the same policeman could be reasonably expected to do so 
enthusiastically as regards Maasai, for example.  A policeman 
assigned to the same area for a prolonged period, it was 
thought, was likely to form local relationships that would 
inhibit effective enforcement of colonial policy.  The result 
of these policies is a force that is alienated from the 
public it is to serve.  Police are often unaware of and 
unconcerned about local customs and personalities.  This has 
been a major issue between the police and the Muslim 
community on the coast. 
 
Police Reforms & Increased Resources 
 
¶7. (SBU)  In 2003 the Kibaki administration drafted an 
ambitious four-year strategic action plan to address these 
 
NAIROBI 00002974  003 OF 004 
 
 
issues.  Some of the reforms achieved to date include: 
 
-- Introduction of a mission statement and change of name to 
emphasize service to the public over enforcing government 
policy on the public.  The Kenya Police Force became the 
Kenya Police Service. 
 
-- Some infrastructure improvements to existing barracks and 
stations, expansion of new facilities in underserved regions. 
 While progress has been achieved, there is still much to do 
in this regard. 
 
-- Increase in pay.  Police pay increased in 2003 by 120%. 
Police salaries are now sufficient to earn entry into the 
lower middle class. 
 
-- Recruitment and promotion processes were reformed after a 
scandal in 2005 that resulted in the cancellation of a 
training class and the dismissal of police officials deemed 
guilty of irregular recruitment.  The new system has not 
generated complaints, which is rare in often contentious 
Kenyan society.  Numbers have increased such that the present 
police to population ratio is 1:530 (down from 1:900). 
 
-- Training has been enhanced (an INL official recently 
visited the training center and was positively impressed). 
There has been an increased adherence to mandatory retirement 
rules and an increase in discharging officers for bad 
behavior.  These moves allow newly recruited, better educated 
and better trained officers to make up an ever larger 
percentage of the force.  That said, one senior police 
official lamented to PolCouns "we still have a lot of 
deadwood on our hands." 
 
-- Communications equipment and vehicles are more available 
than in the past.  A new electronic fingerprint 
identification system has been installed at CID headquarters. 
  Some crucial security equipment is lacking.  This explains 
the Internal Security Minister's recent lobbying for USG 
support in this regard (ref A). 
 
-- Improved community relations through the introduction of 
community policing policies.  KPS and AP have established 
websites and launched information campaigns to promote the 
public's cooperation in solving crimes.  Outreach programs 
seek to overcome the public's traditional fear and loathing 
of the police.  Community policing concepts did not exist in 
Kenya prior to 2003. 
 
¶8. (SBU)  In addition to these reforms and resource 
increases, Ali has successfully shielded KPS from the 
incessant political interference that had plagued it during 
the Moi years.  CP Ali jealously and aggressively defends his 
prerogatives and control of the KPS.  While we believe Ali is 
likely to use KPS to support the government's political 
objectives to some extent when directly asked to do so by the 
President, he is not willing to see members of parliament and 
party financiers routinely treating the police as their own 
private security force, as was formerly their practice.  The 
KPS today is much less politicized than it was under Moi. 
The GSU in particular is beginning to lose its notoriety as a 
ruling party goon squad. However, this new found 
institutional autonomy is wholly dependent on the person of 
CP Ali.  His drive to reduce the scope of individuals outside 
KPS influencing operations extends to security sector donors, 
such as the UK and the U.S.  Security consultations and 
cooperation with Ali can be very difficult. 
 
¶9. (SBU)  Similarly, CP Ali has taken personal control over 
all promotions and transfers to ensure advancement for those 
who abide by his policies, to relegate to backwaters those 
who do not and to eliminate outside influence.  He has also 
improved command and control by increasing service discipline 
(including mass firings of dozens of traffic police at a time 
when captured on video taking bribes).  However, again, these 
actions are not institutionalized.  There is no guarantee 
that the next CP will be equally vigorous in defending KPS 
autonomy and promoting service discipline. 
 
¶10. (SBU) While progress on the reform program has been 
 
NAIROBI 00002974  004 OF 004 
 
 
achieved, the reforms have not yet translated into a dramatic 
rise in effectiveness.  Fear of violent crime is still the 
number one political issue on the minds of Kenyan voters. 
Elements of the police are credibly linked with large 
criminal organizations (ref B), narcotraffickers and gun 
smugglers.  Ali's abrasive style has alienated would-be 
allies in the donor community.  His extreme aversion to 
sharing authority with others sank an attempt to establish a 
U.S.-funded joint anti-terrorism task force in 2005.  While a 
reformer brought in from outside could not be expected to be 
loved by senior KPS officers, Ali often goes out of his way 
to insult and provoke them.  KPS officers then retaliate 
through attempts to sabotage Ali's initiatives.  Ali has 
shown no interest in scrapping colonial era policies that 
prevent police from serving their home communities.  The rate 
of police rotations has significantly increased under his 
leadership. 
 
Prospects for Further Reforms & Resource Increases 
 
¶11. (SBU)  The Kibaki administration's most recent budget 
(ref C) includes a very hefty increase in police funding, 
including the recruitment of another 25,000 officers, 
producing a population to police ratio of 1:450.  Ali 
recently weathered a storm of protests against his leadership 
from a public, media and diplomatic community enraged by a 
spate of grisly and brazen murders.  It appears his place is 
secure.  He is on track to become one of Kenya's longest 
serving CPs.  In the meantime, we and the Kenyan public await 
the day when his reforms begin to yield a dramatic rise in 
police effectiveness against the perpetrators of violent 
crime.  Police responsiveness, crime scene security, 
investigatory prowess, and integrity (especially among 
traffic police) remain far from sufficient to meet the 
security needs of Kenyans. 
SLUTZ