The National Police Service (NPS) has developed a mobile phone application that will allow women in danger to easily report crime or alert authorities.
Moreover, to activate the app, women need to click, stream live, chat or simply shake the phone to alert the nearest police station of danger. Upon receiving the alert, the command center will pick the signal and trace the location of the possible crime scene.
According to the head of Election Security Secretariat at the NPS Mr Dominic Kisavi, this initiative is a result of partnership between NPS, Crown Trust, and UN Women. They also plan to partner with Safaricom.
Mr Kisavi noted that the app will be rolled out by July 20. He further said that the mobile application is configured in a way that once activated, it quickly sends signals to the county police command centers and the headquarters. USSD Code will be made available for those with no smartphones.
“The police stations will have a dashboard where they will receive alerts and send the officers on duty to respond to distress calls by women who are under attack,” said Kisavi.
Similarly, the mobile application will make it possible for the police at the headquarters to determine whether police officers at the county level ignore or act on distress calls.
Mr Kisavi was speaking in Eldoret during a session on the role of the police in election security and talks bordering on police accountability, sexual and gender-based violence and journalists’ safety.
Likewise, the forum which was organized by Amnesty International Kenya, Kenya Human Rights Commission, Henrich Boll Foundation and the International Justice Mission, brought together journalists from Nyanza, Western and Rift Valley.
Furthermore, Mr Kisavi noted that hate speech, biased media reporting, ethnic intolerance, partisan government officials and zoning of certain areas by politicians still pose a big threat of violence.
Nonetheless, he reported that they are cracking down illegal gangs around the country. Moreover, according to Kitavi, NPS is in the process of establishing an election security command center at the national and county levels.