A new team of 600 police officers to be sent to Haiti graduated on Friday ahead of their planned deployment to Haiti for a peacekeeping mission later this month.
The batch includes an all-female Special Weapons and Tactics team.
Officials said they had realised there was need for female officers to help in handling female suspects and other gender related cases.
The officers, drawn from General Service Unit, Anti Stock Theft Unit, Rapid Deployment Unit and the all-female SWAT are ready to join the Kenyan-led Multinational Security Support Mission aimed at restoring peace in Haiti.
Together with the SWAT team, these are paramilitary units with wide combat training. SWAT is the newest police uniin the country and is from the Administration Police Service.
Insiders say they are some of the best-trained officers in street urban combat.
The team, which underwent pre-deployment training, will join other personnel who are already on the ground. Inspector General of Police Douglas Kanja, on November 8, officially closed the Multinational Security Support Mission to Haiti Course at the National Police College Embakasi ‘A’ Campus.
An assessment team will be sent to Haiti to give a report before they are deployed.
The team is among those that met visiting Haiti Prime Minister Garry Conille at the Administration Police Training Campus in Embakasi last month.
This comes as President William Ruto said he held a telephone conversation with US president-elect Donald Trump over the Mission.
“I congratulated him following his election as the 47th President of the United States of America. We discussed areas of mutual interest that are of benefit to the citizens of our two countries, including trade and investment, security and good governance,” Ruto said.
“I briefed President Trump on the Kenya-led Multinational Security Support Mission in Haiti and possible areas of cooperation with the US government on this important conflict resolution initiative.”
Ruto said the mission was improving security in Haiti, calling the fight against gangs “the battle that we can win”.
During a visit by the Haitian
Prime Minister to speed up deployments to the force, Ruto said Kenya would provide 600 more police
officers to bolster the international
anti-gang mission.
