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ABSTRACT
This paper analyses two policing arrangements between the state police and several private security companies in Nairobi, Kenya. These arrangements entail that police officers team up together with security officers in their company vehicles. As private security officers are unarmed in Kenya by law, there is a direct exchange of ‘arms for mobility’, an emic term that refers to an exchange of firearms for ‘mobility’, i.e. vehicles and other financial resources. Based on ethnographic fieldwork on policing in Nairobi, Kenya between 2014 and 2018, I analyse how this exchange (re)centralises the state police and the critical role of the ‘arms’ in this process. Drawing from Star and Griesemer (1989), I see the firearm as a ‘boundary object’ that brings policing actors together, but simultaneously reaccentuates their differences and in this case, reaffirms and repositions the dominant role of the state police in the Kenyan policing landscape. With this argument, I aim to further prompt more in-depth studies on how certain objects define policing practices, and emphasise the merit of ethnographic research as a methodological approach to uncover such dimensions.
KEYWORDS:
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1 This term emerged during an interview conducted with a high-ranking DPU police officer and the police liaison officer from the Department of Safety and Security from the United Nations (UN) in March 2015.
2 See Hicks (Citation2010) for an elaborate discussion and historical analysis of this material turn, especially in anthropology.
3 In the few studies on firearm, the AK-47 has received the most attention (see Graves-Brown Citation2007, Hodges Citation2007, Saramifar Citation2017).
4 ‘Private security guards to be issued with guns in new move’, Standard Digital, https://www.standardmedia.co.ke/article/2001277867/private-security-guards-to-be-issued-with-guns-in-new-move, accessed 22 April 2018).
5 More recently, new pleas to arm security guards have emerged after the terrorist attack on the Dusit hotel in Nairobi on January 16, 2019. Although news reports vary, it seems that the Cabinet has approved the Private Security Regulatory Authority (PSRA) to move forward with allowing guards to carry firearms on duty. See, ‘Bid to arm guards is a ploy to push agenda of rich and powerful clique’, Standard Digital, https://www.nation.co.ke/oped/opinion/Arming-private-security-guards/440808-4993084-15fir79/index.html, accessed 26 February 2019.
6 For more information, see the websites: http://www.ksia.co.ke/ and http://www.psiasecurity.com/. In 2015, the Protective and Safety Association of Kenya (PROSAK) was also set up to specifically include individuals that are not aligned to the two other associations. For more information, see the website: https://www.prosak.or.ke/.
7 Interview: 21 April 2015.
8 Interview: private security consultant, 4 August 2016.
9 I recognise that there are many illegal firearms in Kenya possessed by a range of individuals, yet due to the scope of this paper, I will not discuss this dimension.
10 Interview: 4 August 2018. He further stated that the majority of them are used on conservancies where guards are given guns to protect the conversancy against, for example, poaching.
11 Interview: 26 March 2015.
12 Interview: human rights activist, 15 September 2017.
13 In other meeting minutes, the partnership is labelled as the ‘community policing working group’, because, as one security manager explained, ‘it’s actually for the community’ (interview: 14 April 2015).
14 In fact, the patrols occurred far less than they initially did. One reason for this is that many companies have set up similar, yet more informal, arrangements in other neighbourhoods and with other local (non-DPU) police stations. These are often strategic areas for them, i.e. where they have more clients.
15 See: http://www.kenyalaw.org/KenyaGazette/view_gazette.php?title=2086, accessed 25 September 2018.
16 Interview: 27 April 2015, conducted with Dr. Erella Grassiani.
17 Interview: 25 May 2015.
18 Some participants of this partnership argue that this is largely due to the status of the DPU, which is a police unit known for being ‘elitist’ and having ‘the best officers in Kenya’. Some participants even claimed that this partnership could only work with the DPU, yet the existence of similar policing arrangements elsewhere (Colona and Diphoorn Citation2017) refutes this claim.
19 Interview: 25 May 2015.
20 Interview: 14 April 2015.
21 Interview: 15 May 2015.
22 Interview: 10 April 2015.
23 Interview: 27 April 2015, conducted together with Dr. Erella Grassiani.
24 Interview: 15 May 2015.
25 Interview: 27 April 2015, conducted together with Dr. Erella Grassiani.
26 Interview: 25 May 2015.
27 Interview: 15 May 2015.
28 There is some work on the role of the uniform of police officers (see Bell Citation1982; Joseph and Alex Citation1972), yet this work focuses more on what the uniform symbolises and how it is viewed by others, and not on what the uniform does, i.e. the active part of objects.