So, I witnessed an exchange between our news anchor and reporter Serfine Ochieng’ Auma and the Government Spokesman Charles Owino on our breakfast show, DayBreak, earlier this week.
For once, could we just admit: We have a problem in the police service?
Not Mars. Not society. The police service.
Also, the Government Spokesman cannot start by telling us everything is fine and then, in the same breath, explain why the problem is somebody else’s.
Because imagine a hospital recording an unusually high number of deaths, and the doctors saying: “Well, people die every day, even outside hospitals. This is a societal problem.”
Or buildings collapsing and killing people, and engineers responding: “Well, buildings don’t collapse only because of engineers. Society has a problem.”
Or an airline suffering a series of fatal crashes, and the pilots saying: “Well, people die on the roads every day. This is bigger than us.”
Of course, police officers come from society. But they are also officers of the State, entrusted with enormous power and an even greater responsibility to protect life.
If this is a societal problem, and not merely the responsibility of the police, then do we even need the police? Or should we just organise ourselves as a society?
What we are trying to ask here is: What happened here? Who was responsible? What went wrong? And what are you doing to fix it?
But this? This deflection? This gaslighting? This diversionary tactic?
Nah, nah. This is not it. It’s simply exhausting.
Let us not use society to explain away failures within the institutions we have specifically entrusted to keep us safe.
Sometimes accountability really is that simple.
We have a problem. And we need to fix it.
We have made some strides, but we still have more to do.
