Misuse of guns? Experts point at bigger problem in the police service as elite officers turn on colleagues

The increased incidences of police officers shooting their colleagues have raised questions on whether it is the result of misuse of guns or there is a deeper mental health problem in the National Police Service.

Worse still, the culprits include those serving in strategic areas such as VIP protection and Parliament. For a police officer to qualify for deployment to elite units or services, one is expected to have exceptional qualities, in addition to advanced training, and be mentally fit.

More questions are also raised on why officers are armed when off-duty and drinking in bars and their canteens, as National Police Service Standing Orders require them to return their guns to the armory when not on duty.

Over the years, a spike in fatal shootings in the service has been linked to trauma as a result of very difficult situations they operate in, besides putting their lives at risk.

However, according to Police Spokesperson Muchiri Nyaga, the recent cases are isolated, and they do not indicate any misuse of firearms.

He terms the cases as isolated and sad.

“The few recent cases are sad and isolated. They do not indicate a trend of police officers breaching firearm guidelines within NPS,” Muchiri said.

However, Munene Mugambi, the Deputy Chief Executive Officer and Director of Inspections, Monitoring, and Preventive Services at the Independent Policing Oversight Authority (IPOA), who was a member of the Maraga taskforce on police reforms, agrees there is a deeper problem and only implementation of recommendations in their report can resolve it.

According to Mugambi, there is need to prioritise the mental health of the officers and enhance command accountability.

“The rising cases of officers turning guns on colleagues expose deep flaws in the NPS-mental health struggles, substance abuse, weak firearm control, and poor supervision. We must move from reactive responses to structured reforms that prioritise mental wellness, ethical training, and command accountability,” he says.

Even though the numbers are not as high as in 2015 and 2017, when nine and five officers were killed  by their colleagues respectively, there is concern that recommendations of a taskforce headed by the then-Assistant Inspector General of Police Aggrey Adoli to determine the root cause of the problem, and which could have reversed the trend, have never been implemented.

Though the taskforce’s findings of the report were not made public, it was established that highhandedness by some commanders, depression and crimes of passion were among the leading causes of the problem.

The team led by Adoli also established that alcohol and substance abuse among the officers was prevalent, with the taskforce recommending individual officers to be well equipped to deal with it.

Currently, the use of alcohol and substance abuse among the service men and women seems to have increased if the fact that in all the recent cases, occurred the assailants have always been found to be high on something.

The report also established that marital problems, financial management handicaps, and low morale were also affecting the officers.

According to experts, since within the police environment, officers may not admit to experiencing difficulty, it is important for their seniors to watch out for signs like increased lateness, going home early, working extra hours, absenteeism, withdrawal from social contacts, and frequent mistakes to recommend mental health support, including counselling.

Some of the mistakes include an inability to manage time, frequent accidents and conflict with colleagues.

“Stressed police officers may constitute a threat to themselves, their colleagues, and even members of the public,” warns security expert Richard Tuta.

Our investigations reveal that in cases where junior officers shoot their seniors, it will always be because they were denied transfers, unfairly deployed, or disciplinary actions were taken against them.

In one of the recent incidents, Limo Kipkosgey, an officer attached to Parliament as a protection officer, reportedly shot two officers at the canteen at Gigiri Police Station.

They had been watching the English Premier League match between Machester United and Arsenal while drinking alcohol.

A canteen attendant reported that the officer, who was intoxicated, reached out for his service Jericho pistol before shooting the two colleagues after the disagreement. They suffered injuries left chest and lower abdomen with one of them being fatally shot.

The deceased officer, Eric Munga, who was attached to Runda Police Station, was pronounced dead on arrival at the Agha Khan hospital, while his Judiciary Counterpart, Philip Kae, who sustained an injury on the lower abdomen, was admitted at the same hospital.

According to witnesses, the officers were having food and drinks before the altercation broke out and the shooting happened.

The other officers scampered for safety before their colleagues came to disarm the assailant officer.

On Wednesday, a Nairobi court allowed police to continue holding Kipkosgey for 14 days to allow for the completion of investigations into the shooting incident

Days before the incident, police officers on patrol had confronted a General Service Unit (GSU) officer, who was deployed to guard South Sudan President Salva Kiir’s Nairobi home, smoking bhang before he started running. He then fired at the officers after they threatened to shoot if he did not stop.

He shot one of them in the right hip.

The GSU officer then vanished Kiir’s compound as the other officer sought help to rescue his injured colleague.

He was later arrested and his Ceska pistol taken for ballistic tests.

Last month, a police officer shot and killed a colleague in a similar confrontation outside a bar in the Ruaraka area, Nairobi.

Kipkoech Tarus, an officer attached to the VIP protection unit, is suspected of fatally shooting Raphael Kimuli Wambua, who is attached to the Central Bank of Kenya.

Wambua was walking home with his brother, Erick Ngolania, also an officer, when they were confronted by Tarus who is then said to have shot him.

What is worrying is that the trend continues despite the police authorities establishing a counselling service to deal with the situation.

At the same time, National Police Service Commission established a unit and staffed it to, among other things, evaluate, design, and leads an outreach programme that helps prevent mental health and substance abuse.

Even though it is yet to be operationalised, the National Police Hospital along Raila Odinga Road, formerly Mbagathi Way, has a Psychology wing that is also expected to offer counseling and psychotherapy services to the police.