Nairobi — The police force has started to recruit intelligence collection officers from their midst to revamp the force's capacity to detect, prevent and fight crime.

The team, which is scheduled to begin operations by the end of this year, will be a strictly intelligence collection outfit answerable to police commissioner Mathew Iteere and some senior officers.

The agency will be known as the National Intelligence Agency (NIA) but its composition is still being decided on.

Sources in the force say that the intelligence it has been receiving from other security organisations has been inaccurate or malicious and not entirely relevant.

The force has been relying on the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) headquarters-based Criminal Intelligence Unit (CIU) to gather intelligence.

It is expected that most officers attached to CIU will be automatically inducted into the NIA led by Mr Abubakar Mahmud.

However, CIU has been specifically doing criminal profiling and conducting post-mortems of crimes.

Although more than Sh2.5 million is allocated to the CID monthly for collecting intelligence, detectives have complained of lack of funds and other resources.

The decision to revamp the intelligence section was reached after senior officers saw a problem in collection.

"Because we cannot be effective without good intelligence, a decision was made to establish proper collection structures as per the Kenya Police Act," said a source privy to the matter, but not authorised to talk to journalists publicly.

A circular requesting area police chiefs to pick talented officers was sent a month ago. Sources privy to the recruitment said that lists from the provinces had been sent to the police and CID headquarters where they would be scrutinised and vetted.

Police spokesman Eric Kiraithe neither confirmed nor denied the establishment of the parallel intelligence unit, only saying that the force needed intelligence to effectively police the country.