Did Kenya's police command structure result in greater loss of life?

The aftermath of the Garissa University College attack in Kenya has been characterised by a blame game between the police and the military over who takes credit for what despite the fact that the response was slow.

During the Mpeketoni attack last year, the Independent Police Oversight Authority (IPOA) identified slow response and structural command inefficiencies as some of the key issues that ought to be addressed. Sadly, the same story repeated itself in the Garissa attack.

Kenya's current police structure has three separate police commanders who oversee the different entities that make up the National Police Service. The country heads of the Kenya Police Service, the Administration Police Service and the semi-autonomous Criminal Investigations Department (CID) all report to national police headquarters in Nairobi.

According to a senior police source, this central reporting system costs the force a lot of time in the event of emergencies such as terrorist attacks.

“Within the police force, we have seen commanders of the Kenyan Police Service and the Administration Police having no right to issue orders to each other’s officers. They also cannot engage the specialised armed officers of the GSU (General Service Unit) or RDU (Rapid Deployment Unit) without first getting authorisation from police headquarters in Nairobi,” he said.

An Independent Policing Oversight Authority (IPOA) report confirms the same, noting that the Kenya Police commanders lamented that they cannot directly issue operational orders to officers from the Administration Police Service and specialised units such as the GSU.

“Despite the magnitude of the situation and its urgency, these units have to obtain approval from their national headquarters before embarking on any operation,” IPOA said in its report.

READ: Time for Kenya to rethink its war on terror

In a statement, the Interior ministry spokesman, Mwenda Njoka, also dismissed the criticism of slow response saying that the police reaction time during the attack was reasonable.

"If you look at how we responded it was not bad at all, say, compared to Westgate. It takes time to assess and make the decisions, escalating it from National Security Advisory Committee to the National Security Council and then to scramble the elite units, get them to the airport and fly them to Garissa which is a two hour flight. There were many moving parts.” Mr Njoka said.

Sources say that it is almost difficult for the security forces to react decisively and and in a timely manner because of the command flow within the police force. Take for example the Interior security spokesman's admission that the attack coordination involved the National Security Advisory Committee to the National Security Council.

The former is a technical committee comprising of the President, the Deputy President, the Cabinet Secretaries responsible for defence, foreign affairs and internal security, the Attorney-General, the chief of the Kenya Defence Forces, the Director-General of the National Intelligence Service and the Inspector-General of the National Police Service.

IPOA’s Chairman Macharia Njeru said that the Garissa incident, coming soon after other terrorist attacks, calls for the professional police response to pre-empt loss of lives.

More efficient structure

The IPOA Mpeketoni report noted that it was important that the Inspector General provides an efficient command structure that can work within the county level. Section 10(1) provides that the Inspector General of Police will provide a command structure and system of the service for efficient administration of the service nationally.

He is therefore enabled by the law to appoint a single county police commander to co-ordinate effective policing, overseeing all police units be it the Kenya Police, General Service Unit, Administration Police, Directorate of Criminal Investigation and Rapid Deployment Unit.

Security analyst Titus Munale said that Kenya needs a crack unit that is specifically going to handle terrorism attacks in the country with a centralised command to ease these command structure bottle necks.

“Recce has proved their worth and we need to have them incorporated under the Anti-Terrorism Police Unit (ATPU) so that we can have things under control within hours. At the moment, the ATPU's main role is counter terrorism, yet when it gets to the real terror attacks, we do not have a clear command picture on which unit takes charge,” Mr Munale said.

“What we saw in Garissa is not how an operation should be effectively handled. All units scrambled officers to take on the attackers. Even when the elite unit was ready, there was still no clear cut command structure for them to take charge. Time is of essence and having a unit like Recce with the right equipment and command is important,” he said.