Think the Police are your friends? Think again

Last month residents of Mukuru slum witnessed the deaths of eight young men aged between 17 and 24. All eight were killed in a police crackdown in the slum. The police claimed that the eight were members of a gang that had been terrorizing the slum for a long time. They are alleged to have been involved in a robbery with violence which left one man dead. According to police reports, four guns were recovered from the eight.

However, the parents of the alleged criminals sang a different song; their children were no criminals and were wrongly killed by the police. At first I was willing to let the story go. After all, which sane parent can admit to their child being a criminal? But when the residents who were allegedly being terrorized by the eight supported the parents’ claims I became curious.

The residents claimed that the killings were cases of mistaken identities and denied police reports which stated that the eight were criminals. They went ahead and took to the streets to protest the killings.

This got me thinking hard and asking myself questions;

If the eight were indeed criminals as the police are claiming, wouldn’t the residents of Mukuru slum be rejoicing? Why are they protesting the killings instead? Was this a case of mistaken identity as the residents and parents are claiming?

Why did the police kill them on the spot giving them no chance to go through a fair trial? Where did the ‘recovered guns’ come from? Were they planted by the police? Did the police kill them to create a buzz that they are actually doing their work? Did they know that the eight were actually not criminals and killed them on the spot so that they would never get to tell the truth?

Today, the post-mortem results on the bodies of the eight suspects were revealed. According to these findings by IMLU Director Peter Kiama, the eight were killed in cold blood while lying on the ground or kneeling. The findings go on to indicate that the eight were shot at close range. All this sums up into one likely conclusion; the eight young men were executed.

Related case

In 2014, Aljazeera ran a story dubbed ‘Inside Kenya’s death squads’ which claimed that a special police unit had been authorized by the government to secretly carry out extrajudicial killings.

According to the documentary, the special unit was targeting ‘Muslim radicals’. Some police officers even confessed to carrying out these killings saying that they were just carrying out instructions.

They confessed that they had been asked to kill and ‘plant’ evidence on the victims. Allegations that the government through the ministry of security vehemently denied.

The following year, one of Kenya’s top investigative journalists Mohammed Ali in collaboration with Aljazeera ran another documentary on the same. The documentary showed interviews from eyewitnesses who recorded the police killing innocent young men and planting evidence on them.

According to Ali’s report, 1,500 innocent people had been killed by the police in different parts of the country between 2009 and 2015. Just like before, the government had refuted these claims.

Based on all these cases, one cannot help but question the role of police in the society.

Police are supposed to protect and keep us safe. They are supposed to be our friends.

Well, this might have been the case years ago. Back then, a community felt safe knowing that there were policemen on patrol walking in the cold night guarding them from criminals. One did not have to worry about getting home at night because there would always be friendly policemen on patrol.

Traveling in vehicles at night or in the wee hours of the morning felt safer because there were traffic police to keep you from hijackers and ensure you got to your destination on time. In short, you knew that police were your friends and they had your back no matter what.

In fact, some years ago I was walking from Parklands, Nairobi to the CBD a few minutes after midnight. There was no matatu in sight. A police car on night patrol passed me but stopped just a few metres ahead of me.

One of the officers alighted and asked me why I was walking alone so late in the night. I explained my situation and the friendly officer asked me to hop in the police car for a ride to the CBD.

There were about three other policemen in the car. They dropped me in town at the bus stop where I was to board a matatu to Kawangware and waited with me until a matatu came. They only left after the matatu was fully occupied and ready to leave for Kawangware. I cannot recall what they looked like or their names but I still remember this act to date.

Today, however, I’m not sure if I can happily hop into a police car for a lift. What if they frame me for a crime? We’ve heard cases of people who claim to have been framed by police and are now rotting in jails. Some even dead.

Look at our roads; bribing is the order of the day. Scared drivers and motorists have to pay bribes even when they’re sure their vehicles are in line with all road rules and regulations. Why? Because police will create a charge against them and before they clear their names they’ll have used every penny under their names.

Today, if you went and told the parents of the gunned down youths that police are their best friends and they should not fear them, do you think they will believe you even if they wanted to?

Day by day, police are becoming more of enemies than friends to the citizens they are supposed to protect.

A group of youths walking around in any town is more afraid of encountering the police than they are of encountering armed robbers. From the stories doing rounds of police killing innocent people, they know that it would only take a few minutes for their names to make headlines as members of a wanted gang of criminals gunned down and guns recovered.

I’m aware that not all policemen are bad, there are those that are actually our friends. I know a few. But the ‘bad police’ have overshadowed them and made the entire police unit an enemy of the people.

The unfortunate part is that the truth about these allegations of police extrajudicial killings will never be known; because the victims are already dead and dead men tell no tales. But if there’s one thing that I’ve learnt from all these cases, it’s this; the police are not our friends any more. If you think they are, think again.