Why Kenyans prefer to bribe police instead of fighting for their rights

PHOTO | FILE Research by various institutions have been ranking police as the most corrupt in the country with traffic department topping the list.  NATION MEDIA GROUP

In Summary
The trend of “buying convenience” through bribery raises a real risk of devaluing the shilling and fuelling inflation because it means that a policeman can make over Sh50,000 a day, perhaps more
Traffic police and motorists afraid of being on the wrong side of the law have turned convenience into a commodity that can be traded in the black market and in dingy, dark and dank corridors of police stations.

It is not uncommon to hear tales of how intimidated drivers, afraid of being hauled to court or spending time in a cell, pay hefty bribes to traffic police officers to avoid the inconvenience of a court appearance or the indignity of being held in a dirty cell with offenders of the opposite gender.

The trend of “buying convenience” through bribery raises a real risk of devaluing the shilling and fuelling inflation because it means that a policeman can make over Sh50,000 a day, perhaps more, merely by standing at a strategic corner and raising his hand every time a motorists makes a wrong turn.

If we have even a conservative 500 officers engaging in this racket, it means they can collect upwards of Sh5 million irregularly each day. All they need to do is “arrest” five to 10 offenders each.

In effect, such rogue officers can pocket in a day what some honest workers earn in two months of toil and moil. To rub salt on the wound, the cash isn’t even subject to VAT.

One of the most common reasons that motorists give for bribing police officers has to do with the desire to avoid lengthy court processes or wasting time at police stations, haggling with officers whose sole aim is to raise the stakes in the hope of squeezing commensurate bribes from the suspects rather than enforcing traffic regulations.

And because the officers have inculcated fear in the public, motorists rarely stand their ground even when they are convinced that they have committed no offence.

In instances when they are taken to court, many just plead guilty because it is more convenient to pay the fine and move on. This means that traffic police are seldom required to prove their cases even when they embellish charge sheets.

And because judges, too, want to be seen to be dispensing with many cases, they hardly stop to ask why every suspect is pleading guilty and what circumstances led to their arrest and prosecution.

This not only undermines justice, but also erodes public confidence in the police and the Judiciary because it becomes common wisdom that you can be charged and fined even when you have been slapped with erroneous charges or when you have a case that cannot be proven beyond reasonable doubt.

The risk to society is that this can turn the justice system into a conveyor belt whose sole purpose is to raise revenue for the Treasury or line the pockets of police.

But what needs to be done?

One of the things that the public must insist on is for conditions in cells to be improved drastically, especially the sanitation and respect for separation on the basis of gender.

For a long time, police have got away with this abuse of basic human rights and it will remain difficult to build a saner society unless such basics as clean toilets and well lit cells are guaranteed.

Secondly, suspects must not be treated as convicts. At that stage, they are yet to be convicted and they retain their full rights.

But these are blows that each one of us has to strike against the system before it suffocates us all.

In the event that one falls foul of the law, one must avoid the temptation of buying convenience. It sounds like a tautology, but we will build a better country if no one is put under undue pressure to plead guilty when one is convinced otherwise.

Naturally, short-term thinking would dictate that one pays a bribe or a fine because the system of extricating oneself is complicated.

However, such small acts compound to influence the kind of society we are creating. It means that if we keep at it, we will be using M-Pesa, not to transact legit businesses, but to send money to bail out largely innocent people caught up in the clogged justice pipeline.

In the final analysis, however, if push comes to shove, it is better to pay the fine. At least the rest of us can hope to benefit from it. If the money goes into the pocket of an individual, that is the last we will see of it... unless we are in the business of selling building materials.