Reform of the National Police Service (NPS), especially in response to some recent allegations of extrajudicial killings and enforced disappearances, should take into account the findings and recommendations of the “Senate Standing Committee on Justice, Legal Affairs and Human Rights Report on Extrajudicial Killings and Enforced Disappearances”.
Tabled before the Senate in October 2021, the report identified several legal, policy and administrative loopholes, to which the committee recommended corrective measures.
One recommendation was that the Cabinet Secretary for Interior and Coordination of the National Government and the Inspector-General of Police (IG) collaboratively develop regulations on the use of force and firearms in compliance with the Sixth Schedule of the National Police Service Act, 2011.
Those would significantly reduce deaths and injuries in encounters where officers choose to use force.
Administrative frameworks in the form of policies, regulations or manuals, besides statutory provisions like legislation and the Constitution as well as International Human Rights Law on the use of force by the police, is the standard policing practice in many countries.
While ‘use of force’ is conventional in the world of policing, it lacks a universal definition. Contextual factors determine how countries codify and apply policies and regulations on the use of force.
The International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP), the largest such grouping, defines the use of force as the quantity of effort that police require to get compliance or overcome a subject’s physical resistance to any command, arrest or detention.
Whichever type of force the police use in any policing situation is dependent on, among other things, provisions of laws and regulations, policies, training and experiences of the officer, policing culture and characteristics of contact incidents. Police have varied use-of-force choices—from no use of force to lethal force—depending on policing settings.
Policy-level thinking
In his maiden address soon after his swearing-in, IG Japhet Koome spoke about instances where police can use firearms as provided for in the National Police Service Act, 2011.
Having been appointed at a time when the police service was under heavy criticism over alleged extrajudicial killings and disappearances, his pronouncements should prompt policy-level thinking on what policies, regulations or police manuals to enact to regulate the use of force by the police in ways that promote and protect professionalism and accountability and public safety.
Use of force is an integral part of policing, and inarguably one of the most controversial issues about law enforcement. The lethal end of the ‘use of force’ spectrum usually tends to get more media and public attention whenever deadly force leads to the death or serious injury to a subject in the process of law enforcement.
Substantial media and civil societies’ attention and reporting on it have a direct influence on police-community relations, which overly negative media reporting can derail.
A lack of ‘use for force’ regulation can possibly work to the disadvantage of the police and the public as it leaves room for conjecture, which, in many cases, does not favour law enforcement officers even when the officers act for the greater public good.
