Collins Leitich Chepkulei: Uasin Gishu man defends setting up unauthorised police station

Collins Leitich Chepkulei, the man who set up an unauthorised police station in Cherus Centre, Kesses sub-county, now says that the base was only five days old and no one had even been assigned as a police officer at the site. 

Addressing journalists on Tuesday, Leitich likewise insisted that that he has never impersonated a law enforcement officer, as alleged by media reports.

“I have not impersonated anybody; neither have we put police in that thing; it is only 5 days old. The painting is still raw,” he said.

According to Leitich, the decision to set up the station was arrived at because of persistent insecurity incidents in the area.

He added that residents had been calling for police presence in the area for a long time and with the nearest police station located seven kilometers away, locals decided to take matters into their own hands.

“I decided to paint that place; not like starting, I painted it with the help of the community… as a community and not as me as an individual. It is because of the insecurity we are having in that area,” he said.

“As a community, we’ve been having insecurities and we’ve been telling authorities to help with the police patrol base for the longest and we are not blaming them because maybe there are no funds for that so we decided as the community why don’t we assemble funds …me being the financier, so that we can bring the police close to us.”

To push his point across, Leitich added that he had consulted with local leaders, including Nyumba Kumi representatives, before proceeding with the project

“I have the backing of the community because we were together in this. I talked with the leaders wa Nyumba Kumi before we started this. I don’t want to mention names but we had a meeting,” he said.

Further, Leitich admitted that the process of establishing the base might not have followed the correct procedures, but he expressed his intention to correct any mistakes and ensure the project becomes legitimate.

“There is always a procedure; I cannot say I have made a mistake or not but there is always a procedure and before you can go and paint something you must have gone through a few steps…maybe the steps were not complete but we had taken a few steps,” he said.

“We are correcting those mistakes so that we can legalise the station but if we have wronged the government, maybe we can apologise…maybe we didn’t follow the procedure but going forward we shall be more procedural.”