Effects of media on policing activities in Nairobi county, Kenya

Abstract

The main purpose of this study was to assess the impact of community policing on security in Nairobi County using a case study of Ruai Division. The specific objectives of this study are; to assess the relationship between community policing and crime rate, to determine whether community policing has increased citizen involvement in promoting security and to find out the views of the citizens on how community policing has influenced Citizen-Police relations. Community policing was officially launched on 27th April, 2005 and over ten years of its survival, there still continue to exist strong pockets of resistance from community members who think it is a waste of time to partner with police. This poses the question if community policing was meeting its initial objectives of reducing crime or not. The study established that the awareness of community policing in Ruai had increased. 75% of the respondents felt that community policing was successful therefore the program had created an impact that was desired in Ruai while 73.4% said that the program was successful in reducing crime rate amid 63% of the respondents who agreed that community policing contributed to citizens-police relations. However 60.4% disagreed that police involve community members to participate in implementation of community policing. it was established that the community leaders, National Police Service, and citizens were positive about community police while the business community were moderate, in contrast the, nongovernmental organizations and religious leaders were negative concerning some elements of the program. The study used mixed method design to obtain quantitative and qualitative data. Data was collected using questionnaires and structured interviews. Purposive sampling technique was used to select respondents from National Police Service; community leaders, religious leaders, business community, non-governmental organization and citizens, were selected using maximum variation sampling. The study recommended that the management of National Police Service and all stakeholders improve on their performance and create the requisite synergies to achieve better security results in the future. In addition Nation police service urgently operationalises the National Police Service Act No. 11 of 2014 so that community members can effectively engage with police otherwise citizens will never own the program.