Former Interior Cabinet Secretary Fred Matiang’i has said police officers in Kenya are not trained to harm citizens but to preserve law and order, and those who deviate from that mandate must be held accountable under the law.
Speaking on a local media station on July 1, 2025, as he reflected on the conduct of police officers during his tenure, Matiang’i dismissed suggestions that police brutality is a product of the country’s training doctrine, instead blaming individual misconduct.
“We don’t train police in Kenya to kill citizens. The theory of policing in Kenya is for the preservation of law and order. That does not mean, however, that individual police officers can go above and over the responsibilities they have,” Matiang’i stated.
Matiang’i compared rogue policing to professional misconduct in other sectors, including education and law, insisting that individual wrongdoing should not taint the integrity of entire institutions.
“It’s just like in the teaching profession – we do not prepare teachers in our country so that they can have affairs with students and engage in illegal activity, but we are aware that that kind of temptation can happen. That is why, for example, there is a code of conduct for teachers,” he explained.
Legal consequences
He emphasised that the National Police Service has clear standing orders, including guidelines on how to respond to riots and protests, stating that any officer who operates outside those instructions is subject to legal consequences.
“When police are trained to deal with riots and respond to the riots, they are given clear instructions and guidelines on how they’re supposed to go. Those who act outside of those instructions, in other words, they act outside of the standing orders, they face the consequences of the law,” he said.
“There are police officers who are in court today for actions they did. There are police officers who have been prosecuted,” he added.
Taking accountability
Matiang’i pointed to the case of Baby Pendo in Kisumu as an example where the government, under his leadership, admitted wrongdoing and cooperated with oversight bodies such as the Independent Policing Oversight Authority (IPOA).
“We mediated as the government. We said we would like to support the investigation in this matter, because this has gone beyond what is supposed to be done,” he explained.
The former CS stated that the government, during his tenure, did not shy away from accountability.
“When things went wrong, and we believe in some cases things went wrong, we readily admitted. We actually cooperated with the agencies,” Matiang’i stated.
