In a press briefing Tuesday, Kinoti instead turned the heat on Citizen tv reporter Purity Mwambia and her Royal Media Services (RMS) bosses over the story terming it “sensational and inaccurate”.
“The inaccurate and highly sensational report aired on CTV in the 7pm and 9pm news made no effort to reach out to the security sector for a reply. The report breached very high security protocols,” said Kinoti.
“RMS chose to entirely rely on the confessions of a criminal to air the report. None of the weapons belong to NPS officers. All our weapons are serialised in a particular manner, these ones do not belong to us,”.The AK-47 assault rifle that was seen in Citizen TV’s ‘Guns Galore’ exposé was a Chinese replica of the Russian weapon. he added.
Kinoti said it was criminal for the Citizen TV reporter to hold the weapons she used in her investigative piece for the entire period before surrendering them to the police service.
“I have never seen such a pistol issued to an officer in all the 20 years I’ve served in the service. Holding the weapons for the entire period was criminal. The report was a deliberate move to humiliate the NPS, it amounts to abuse of media freedom,” the DCI boss added.
The DCI boss said he had asked RMS editorial director Joe Ageyo and strategy and innovation director Linus Kaikai to provide more details on the pistol and AK47, saying the RMS letter of surrender lacked their serial numbers to prove they belong to the service.
“Any misuse of a single weapon is cause for alarm because we don’t know how many crimes the weapons have been used in. If you tell us you got them from the police, which officer was it? So that we take action. The way the story was aired was sensationalised against the entire police force,” added Kinoti.
He instead linked the firearms and handcuffs that Mwambia managed to procure for her story to civilians and cattle rustlers
“The ammunition procured by RMS can be gotten from licensed firearm holders or criminals. Every police station/division has a firearm register and a daily movement register of the weapons. Those that get lost are investigated.”
In the Citizen tv exposé, Mwambia and her crew showed how they were able to procure a pistol, AK47 rifle, a pair of handcuffs and police uniforms allegedly from officers through criminal middlemen and aired on Sunday.
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