Kenya’s police recruitment dispute has acquired the makings of a constitutional thriller. The Law Society of Kenya (LSK) is heading to the Supreme Court to challenge a Court of Appeal judgment that places the recruitment of uniformed police officers under the Inspector-General, Douglas Kanja, rather than the National Police Service Commission (NPSC). Beneath the legal language lies a question with profound consequences for the country’s security architecture: who gets to choose the men and women entrusted with enforcing the law?
In a notice of appeal filed through lawyer Duncan Okatch, the LSK expressed dissatisfaction with the appellate court’s decision of October 16, 2026, and signalled its intention to challenge the entire judgment. The move reopens a dispute that has already travelled through two levels of the judiciary, with the commission and the society arguing unsuccessfully that the Constitution gives the NPSC authority over the recruitment of police officers.
The Court of Appeal, comprising Justices Patrick Kiage, Jamila Mohammed and Jessie Lesiit, upheld an earlier ruling by the Employment and Labour Relations Court. Its interpretation drew a distinction between uniformed officers, who exercise police powers, and civilian employees who perform administrative, technical, medical, accounting, information technology and legal functions within the National Police Service.
The judges held that Article 246(3) of the Constitution empowers the commission to recruit and appoint civilian personnel, but does not confer the same authority over sworn officers. Article 245, meanwhile, protects the Inspector-General’s independent command over the service, including decisions concerning officers’ employment, assignment, promotion, suspension and dismissal.
The distinction is more than a lawyer’s exercise in constitutional semantics. It concerns the distribution of power within one of the state’s most consequential institutions. Recruitment determines who enters the police service; command determines how officers operate. The question is whether those functions can be divided without weakening accountability, or whether placing them under separate authorities risks creating competing centres of influence.
The dispute began in September 2025, when the NPSC advertised vacancies for 10,000 police constables and published recruitment regulations. Former Kilome MP John Harun Mwau challenged the exercise, arguing that the commission lacked constitutional authority to recruit sworn members of a national security organ.
On October 30, 2025, Justice Hellen Wasilwa ruled in his favour, declaring the regulations unconstitutional and barring the commission from recruiting, training, employing, assigning, promoting, suspending or dismissing members of the service. The NPSC and LSK appealed, but the Court of Appeal dismissed both challenges in October 2026.
The commission’s argument was that the Constitution authorises it to recruit and appoint persons to offices within the National Police Service without expressly excluding uniformed officers. The appellate judges rejected that interpretation, finding that the constitutional text deliberately distinguishes between members of the service and civilian personnel holding offices within it.
They also dismissed the suggestion that limiting the commission’s powers would necessarily revive police impunity. The Inspector-General, they maintained, remains subject to constitutional accountability and the rule of law. Independence, in other words, is not a synonym for immunity.
That argument cuts to the heart of Kenya’s post-2010 constitutional settlement. The police are not merely an instrument of state power; they are a public institution whose legitimacy depends on professionalism, impartiality and respect for human rights. The Constitution seeks to insulate police command from improper interference while providing mechanisms to prevent abuse. Reconciling those objectives is the delicate business now returning to the courts.
The stakes are also practical. The recruitment dispute halted a planned intake of 10,000 constables, while the wider disagreement has touched on promotions, personnel management and the police payroll. For young Kenyans seeking employment, the institutional contest has consequences beyond legal doctrine: recruitment cannot proceed normally while the authority to conduct it remains contested.
The Supreme Court will now have an opportunity to consider the constitutional questions if the matter proceeds in accordance with its jurisdiction and procedural requirements. The LSK’s notice signals an intention to appeal; it is not itself a judgment, nor does it establish that the Supreme Court has agreed to overturn the decision.
For Kanja, the Court of Appeal ruling was a victory for the independence of police command. For the commission and the LSK, the fight concerns the constitutional allocation of recruitment powers and the institutional safeguards surrounding it.
The irony is that both sides invoke constitutional order to defend their positions. One insists that the person responsible for commanding officers must have authority over their recruitment. The other challenges the boundaries drawn around the commission’s role.
Kenya’s highest court may yet have the final word. Until then, the battle over who recruits the police is also a battle over how power should be distributed, supervised and restrained in a constitutional democracy. The uniforms may belong to the police, but the rules governing who wears them belong to the Constitution.