Sirro is right to question some officers short on ethics, discipline

 -change the law on unbailable offices, and the president has now responded with an overture for plea bargaining, for all sabotage suspects.

The move by Prime Minister Kassim Majaliwa to make an extensive tour of Morogoro region and unearth scores of instances of negligence and dereliction of duty was a sort of repetition of what the president earlier did in Mwanza region, and to an extent in a tour of Southern Highlands regions much earlier.  In all these tours there was an in-depth look into what is happening and taking measures to solve those problems, even scolding top officials for negligence, letting issues hang until top leaders appear.

Inspector General of Police Simon Sirro has come out in the same outlook, to tell top officials of the police force that ethical standards and discipline among the police force rank and file was becoming a headache. He was frank that higher police officers were often to blame.

The IGP was addressing a three-day meeting of a task force of senior police officers at police headquarters. The task force includes regional police commanders (RPCs), convened to present performance evaluations for the past two and half years. There was a political aspect to the issue, as the meeting was also meant to draw rules of conduct in relation to overseeing forthcoming local government elections. It was make sure that political overtones are kept at a minimum, as they embarrass the force when ghastly incidents of police violence occur.

 The IGP harnessed fairly intense psychological energy to ask senior police officers in attendance whether they can stand up to events like the shooting of Daudi Mwangosi in September 2012 and the death of Akwilina Akwilini in February 2018 and say the police did their work properly. He mentioned those two instances as civic polls are coming up, and he pointedly accused some police officers of political exhibitionism, as if they wished to be elected. He also queried parading crime suspects, as it is pointless.

The message of the IGP was that the p0lice should focus on professionalism, not exhibitionism and wishing to be commended by public antics that deviate from Police Force Regulations. He signaled clear awareness of where the problem starts, saying the deterioration of standards in regard to police training was appalling, illustrating that a police officer rushes to an incident of crime and then posts unintelligible things in social media platforms.

He pointed at the piling up of exhibits up to headquarters level, saying this was incomprehensible as each of those cases has stations and have their own commanders. It means the rank does not take its responsibilities and tends to push upwards. But isn’t that due to some habitual interference from upwards, to influence outcomes? On the whole the IGP was frank about the challenges, from the level of training to adopting civilian habits like posting things on social media, to avoiding tackling cases, by pushing issues to higher levels. The IGP is unlikely to clear out half of that bill, but still it would make a difference.