Ipoa has threatened court action against top police bosses, claiming they are stonewalling its efforts to oversight police management of the protests.
The Independent Policing Oversight Authority has said its work is frustrated amid public criticism it is sitting on its hands as policing of protests gets out hand.
They accuse the police of refusal to avail deployment schedules, arms registers, records of their usage and ignoring summonses it issues.
Commissioner Joseph Waiganjo said they are mulling seeking warrants of arrest against some senior commanders and officers, whom he said are blocking their access to crucial documents.
He also claimed the commission is also being frustrated by some public hospitals that are refusing to avail medical records for injuries they believe were sustained during the protests.
“It is not just lack of cooperation from police senior command, it is also from some government institutions," Waiganjo said.
"We have been visiting some major public hospitals, trying to get medical records of those involved in the demonstrations and those we think their injuries are related to gunshot wounds and the institutions are not giving us the cooperation that we require.”
“In the life of Ipoa, we have not seen the levels of noncooperation from senior commanders that we are seeing now.”
He said as per the law, the authority has to obtain certain documents from the police in the course of its investigations to build a reasonable case, but the stonewalling has impeded it.
“We have to go back to them to obtain certain documents, the essential one that we cannot move forward without. [But we are in] a very hostile environment where when our officers go out there, they don’t get information they need and when we issue summonses, they are not responded to,” Waiganjo said.
As a remedy, he said, the authority will seek a court intervention and hold the personalities stopping its work to account.
“We are considering moving to the Judiciary to issue warrants of arrest for senior commanders so they can come and give us information because the public is demanding that we do certain things within our mandate. The law allows us to escalate matters to court for warrants of arrest,” Waiganjo said.
“We need to have deployment schedules, arms registers and we need to know where those arms are and in whose hands. If we don’t get information or cooperation from senior police officers, then it would appear like we are doing nothing.”
On hooded police with unmarked cars, Ipoa said “police is clearly breaking the law”.
“The officers, even those in uniform are not displaying their name tags and service numbers,” Waiganjo said.
The commissioner said Ipoa’s working theory on the police officers deployed against the protesters and are using hoods and unmarked vehicles, is there is a specialised unit that has been cobbled up to deal with the unrest and is shielded from accountability.
“As an authority, we are suspecting there is a specific unit being sent outside there to commit atrocities, aside from the usual deployments,” he said.
Ipoa chairperson Anne Makori said on Wednesday they have forwarded four files to the ODPP for action while still investigating others.