Weeks after the Special Service Unit was disbanded, the Director of Criminal Investigations Mohamed Amin is out to recruit a new squad.
He will give it a new name and read their mandates so as it does not fall into the same fate as the past ones, which were accused of among others extrajudicial killings.
Amin wants to shortlist 50 police officers each from Administration Police and General Service Unit to join the new squad.
He sent a memo to the two services asking the commanders there to allow him to recruit the team.
Those who will fit in the new team must have served for a minimum of five years, have no disciplinary record for the last three years and must have passed the whole police law examination.
Those seeking to join the squad must be below 40 years and must have above average marksmanship skills, Amin said.
“We request the list of the shortlisted candidates for our further attention. Interviews will be scheduled on short notice at the respective Unit headquarters,” he said in a memo dated November 17.
They will be taken for a training session at the Magadi GSU camp and be retrained before being deployed for their mission, officials said.
The move is informed by reports some forms of crime are on the rise in the past months amid efforts to address them.
Such a squad is most of the time relied on to respond to any murder incident involving violent criminals on the run or unsolved issues and even terrorism.
The personnel from the team are usually picked from stations’ general duty personnel, APS, GSU, DCI and GSU.
They are usually taken to be elite because of the nature of their work.
Among others, they handle fraud, drug related cases, terror related incidents where they are called as back up team and other forms of crime.
With their special training, SSU and other teams silenced terror gangs by either killing them or forcing them into exile.
Police officers attached to crack units stand out in comparison to colleagues from the regular duty.
For instance, they dress in plain clothes and ride in unmarked cars, which are at times fitted with foreign registration number plates.
And while police officers in regular duty are required to maintain a clean shave, those in the crack units often sport baggy trousers, trendy T-shirts, dreadlocked hair and long beards just in case they have to go undercover.
In most cases, the unit officers do not appear in court to give evidence since most of their missions are like those of hit squads.
In a majority of the cases, they are not sent to make arrests because their missions involve the exchange of fire that often ends in the deaths of suspects.
SSU officers were also mainly used to carry out special duties such raids.
