President Uhuru Kenyatta has informed top police bosses that he saw police officers taking bribes while he was recently in Mombasa.
The President made his statements while addressing top police bosses from the National Police Service in Nairobi on Saturday, January 23.
More than 200 high ranking officers attended the meeting that took place at the Police Pavilion in South C.
Uhuru described the experience to the top cops: “Juzi nilikuwa Mombasa… jameni mtu amesimamisha gari katikati ya barabara, akichukua pesa kutoka kwa abiria. Sasa jameni, wale ambao wote including myself, ambao tulikuwa nyuma tunaona mtu akiokota pesa, unafikiria mtu atafikiria namna gani? Eh? Tuambiane ukweli! Eh! (The other day I was in Mombasa and someone had stopped the car in the middle of the road taking money from passengers (in a PSV). Can you imagine? All of us who were behind watching, what were we supposed to think?).”
The incident of bribery took place on Monday, January 11, at approximately 11 pm. Presidential guards then spotted what officers blocking traffic and arrested them. The cops were released from custody on Friday, January 15, and promptly given the sack, reports The Standard.
For their part, the officers claim that the matatu they stopped was blocking traffic and they were attempting to remove it from the road. It was then that the presidential motorcade passed by on their way to Moi International Airport.
The President continued to denounce the practice of bribery during his address to the police bosses: “As commanders, you must set the right example and not allow these kinds of things to happen! It cannot be that the police are going to deemed, year after year, as the most corrupt, most vile, the most everything bad when it comes to public perception and yet we know it is very few people. A few of us go out there and give the majority a bad name, and you know very well what I am saying. We must accept that we must remove these small negative elements in our midst,”
The meeting was attended by police bosses including regional coordinators, top administration police officers and county criminal investigation officers.
The criticism from the President came on the same day that he announced plans for the National Police Service to be better equipped with additional armoured vehicles and helicopters.
His announcement came less than two weeks after the al-Shabaab militia attacked soldiers from the Kenya Defense Forces (KDF) in El-Adde, Somalia, killing an unknown number of soldiers.
Bribery among police is considered to be a major problem within Kenya. The seeking of bribes is particularly common within the ranks of traffic police.
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