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Communities And the Fight Against Crime

The East African Standard (Nairobi)
ANALYSIS
April 16, 2004
Posted to the web April 16, 2004
Nairobi
Quite predictably, there has been a buoyancy of hope among Kenyans that the
security situation will improve with the appointment of a new police
commissioner. It happens every time such an appointment is made.
But there is greater hope this time that the new police boss will find ways and
means of co-opting the public into the fight against crime. We have enunciated
the possible reasons for that in an earlier article. More importantly, the
involvement of the business community in the capital city in the fight against
crime is critical.
Under the Nairobi Central Business District Association, the business community
was coopted into this fight a couple of years ago. The police booths that are
now strewn around the city, with no one manning them and with absolutely no use
to Kenyans, were a direct result of this cooperation.
In the estates, a number of the booths were set up as a sign of what
cooperation between the police and the communities could achieve.
By and by, the project that had started off so well fizzled out. The booths are
still accumulating dust and the communities and the police have relapsed into
the adversarial mode that used to characterize their relationship with each
other prior to the initiation of the community policing projects. In countries
where communities, be they civil or business, cooperate with the law
enforcement agencies, crime is reduced drastically. In South Africa, an
organization called Business Against Crime (BAC) was able to bring crime in
Cape Town and Johannesburg down drastically. It was formed in 1996 following
appeal by the then President Nelson Mandela. It saw, the head of SA's largest
corporation, Meyes Kahn, being appointed chief executive officer of the SA
police services for a two-year period. A direct link between the people and the
police was forged.
Video surveillance, which we are now told will be installed in Nairobi, reduced
street crime by 80 per cent. It started in Cape Town and extended to
Johanesburg.
The willingness of the business community to plunge into the fight against
crime in South Africa is one of the reasons why that country seems to be
achieving a lot in this area.
This example illustrate that the business community, and in deed the civil
society, can cooperate in this fight. It is for the police to show that they
are willing to coopt them. The results might surprise everybody.

   

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