It is easy to draw a portrait of a metropolitan police officer who will be manning Nairobi under the Sh80 billion cooperation agreement between President William Ruto and Nairobi Governor Johnson Sakaja.
According to Interior Cabinet Secretary Kipchumba Murkomen, who was tasked by the president to prepare a framework for having a Nairobi Metropolitan Police Unit in two months, the officer will be carved straight from templates offered by First World countries.
Think of an officer fitted with a camera, whose pockets and belt loops are stuffed with various weapons and tools, being moved around in a special vehicle, and often arriving on location within the shortest time.
“We don’t want to benchmark with the small or fellow developing countries. We want to benchmark on where we are going, which is [the] First World,” Mr Murkomen said last Thursday.
“We want to look at: how do you reorganise a metropolis? And how do you provide the security? What additional security equipment and additional security infrastructure, including cameras, are supposed to be used in the city? What kind of vehicles are required by a city police?” Mr Murkomen added.
“We are going to have to work on a very serious paper that looks at comparative analysis and studies of what has happened in other countries,” he said.
But how have other countries done it? In the US, the capital — Washington DC — has a dedicated police unit, called the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD). The unit states on its website that it is one of the 10 largest local agencies in the US and that it is the primary law enforcement agency for the District of Columbia.
The Nairobi City Skyline on April 27, 2023.
Photo credit: Wilfred Nyangaresi | Nation Media Group
“Founded in 1861, the MPD of today is on the forefront of technological crime fighting advances, from highly developed advances in evidence analysis to state-of the-art information technology,” it says.
Photos of MPD officers reveal highly equipped personnel, with outfits that include a front-facing camera attached at the chest and a pistol always at the hip.
In China’s capital, there is the Beijing Municipal Public Security Bureau. On its website, it says that some of its functions include “implementing the laws, regulations, rules, and policies on public security of the state.
In England’s capital, there is the City of London Police. It is in charge of a small region within a bigger area covered by the Metropolitan Police. The City of London Police says its responsibilities include reducing neighbourhood crime and harm, protecting the city from terrorism, tackling anti-social behaviour and reducing violent crime, disrupting criminal money flows and seizing proceeds of crime.
Mr Murkomen said the president wants his office to look at the example of London and “other progressive cities”.
The latest published report by the City of London Police states that it had 1,000 officers by March 31, 2025. Among the interesting interventions over that period was dealing with phone snatching in London.
“During 2024/25, we developed Operation Swipe, the City of London Police’s operation to deter, detect, apprehend and prevent phone snatching. This proactive approach involves visible public messaging – iconic ‘blue plaques’ – placed at phone theft hotspots and locations where arrests of phone snatchers have taken place,” the report says.
Nairobi County askaris during a past Mashujaa Day celebrations.
Nairobi has recently become a phone snatchers’ paradise. If Kenya is to match the standards of such units, it will have to invest heavily on new technology and training. A communication from Governor Sakaja’s office on Friday indicated that the police unit will be one of the outlets of the Sh80 billion that will be dedicated by the national government in the cooperation.
“The Sh80 billion package is earmarked for transformative upgrades: 50,000 new street lights; major sewer and water expansion projects; road, bridge and drainage improvements,” it said.
