Police use DNA Profiling to nab criminals

The noose is tightening on criminals as a re-energised police service use fingerprint lifting, Sh15 billion Integrated Command and Control Centre and DNA Profiling to nab criminals. Add these to the prevailing political goodwill, improved coordination between the Directorate of Criminal Investigation (DCI), Directorate of Public Prosecutions (DPP) and creation of a multi-agency task force and space gets more constricted for criminals.

Nairobi City is proving to be the worst place for criminals to stage serious crimes. Practically every major crime committed in the city in the last few months has been followed by major arrests, placement of suspects to crime scenes and identification of accomplices.

From the assassination of former Kabete MP George Muchai in 2015, the killing of lawyer Willy Kimani, slaughter of Monica Kimani a few weeks ago and countless terror attacks stopped in their tracks, the city has become too hot for criminals. “Technology has been the mainstay of our investigations,” Director of the Directorate of Criminal Investigation (DCI) George Kinoti told the Saturday Standard yesterday.

Also, the rejuvenation of the Crime Research Bureau and scaling down of specialised units from big disjointed to small highly vetted units and specialised training for officers has also improved the situation. “There also is more collaboration with other crime fighting agencies including Interpol,” the DCI boss affirms.

The coordination between the DCI and the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions (ODPP) has also made it more difficult for criminals to get away because highly qualified prosecutors are now enjoined in investigations to guide officers in sealing loopholes that might be overlooked in the prosecution of the cases.

Kinoti recently visited European and Arab countries on a comparative study of how technology is being used to detect, monitor and prevent crime. He has since embarked on getting his officers to embrace technology in fighting crime. More officers are conducting online research. The investment in the UC3 is also being cited as a game-changer in security especially around the city, the nerve centre of the country’s criminal networks.

Officers manning the IC3 command post can monitor any CCTV covered street or building, detect criminals and alert their counterparts on patrol. The cameras are of high definition that an officer can clearly read any document an individual walking, sitting or standing has. Supplementing this is the phone tracking technology which DCI has been perfecting over time.

When Muchai and his bodyguards were murdered in the city centre three years ago, the first port of call for investigators was the IC3 which had just been established. At the IC3, they identified the vehicle which suspected carjackers had used by relying on Intelligence Video Surveillance and the Automatic number plate recognition solution.

Armed with the vehicle’s registration number, the detectives visited the Motor vehicle registration office at Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA) where they identified the female owner of the motor vehicle and tracked her to her residence in Langata. She later revealed she had sold the vehicle to a woman traced to Westlands who later revealed that they had been carjacked and were in the car when the gangsters shot and killed the legislator and his two bodyguards. Using telephone technology, the detectives tracked the stolen mobile phones to a stolen goods broker and later the killers in Ruiru where they were arrested and the murder weapon recovered in Uthiru area.

 

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