Police to launch distress app for women facing violence
A smartphone. The National Police Service will launch an app that enables women facing violence to reach its officers for help.
What you need to know:
- The initiative is a result of partnership between NPS, Crown Trust, UN Women and possibly Safaricom will be brought on board.
- The mobile application, which will be rolled out by July 20, is configured in a way that, once activated, it sends swiftly signals to the county police command centres and the headquarters.
Women who are in danger will now be able to easily report crime or raise the alarm to authorities using a mobile phone application developed by the National Police Service (NPS).
According to NPS, women will only need to click, stream live, chat or just shake the phone, actions that will immediately alert the nearest police station of the danger for them to immediately act by sending officers to the right location of the incident.
Mr Dominic Kisavi, head of Election Security Secretariat at the National Police Service, said the initiative is a result of partnership between NPS, Crown Trust, UN Women and possibly Safaricom will be brought on board.
Mr Kisavi said the mobile application, which will be rolled out by July 20, is configured in a way that once activated, it sends swiftly signals to the county police command centres and the headquarters.
"The police stations will have a dashboard where they will receive alerts and send the officers on duty to respond to distress calls by women who are under attack," said Mr Kisavi.
It will also provide an opportunity to chat, or livestream an incident and just by shaking the phone, the command centre will pick the signal and trace the location of the possible crime scene. For those with no smartphones, a USSD Code will be made available.
The app also makes it possible for the police at the headquarters to note whether the officers at the county level ignore or act on distress calls.
Mr Kisavi pointed out that the number of nomination-related cases reported to the police across the country dropped from 1,450 in 2017 to 114 between February and April this year. He attributed the drop to the increased involvement of police officers in maintaining order during party activities, especially major political outfits such as the Orange Democratic Movement and the United Democratic Alliance.
He was speaking in Eldoret during a session on the role of the police in election security and talks bordering on police accountability, sexual and gender-based violence and journalists’ safety.
The forum, organised by Amnesty International Kenya, Kenya Human Rights Commission, Henrich Boll Foundation and the International Justice Mission, brought together journalists from Nyanza, Western and Rift Valley.
Mr Kisavi pointed out that hate speech, biased media reporting, ethnic intolerance, partisan government officials and zoning of certain areas by politicians still pose a big threat of violence.
He added that they are already cracking down on illegal gangs taking advantage of the ongoing campaigns to commit crime. The NPS is also in the process of establishing an election security command centre at the national and county levels.
@rushdieo3; [email protected]
