Recklessness contributes a great deal more to police killings of innocent civilians than ‘death squads’, the existence of which was denied by the Government at a United Nations hearing this week.
Debate on police killings tends to concentrate largely on how we deal with criminal suspects, specifically organised criminal gangs like Mungiki. Allegations of deliberate, planned killings of suspects usually overshadow the evidence of reckless shooting that results in the frequent deaths of innocent bystanders.
On the day a delegation led by Internal Security Minister George Saitoti presented a defence of the Government’s record on killings to the UN in Geneva, two women were shot during running battles between police and hawkers. The women, neither of whom participated in the day-long riots, died as a result of their injuries.
The deaths should remind the delegation and others that the report by UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions Philip Alston includes such killings as a major problem we must deal with.
"Killings by the police", Alston reports, "are widespread. Some are opportunistic, reckless or personal. Many others are carefully planned." With the Government’s mea culpa in Geneva, and ongoing initiatives such as the police reforms taskforce, we expect that there will be moves to end targeted killings of suspects in favour of arrests. Reforms in the justice system to ensure those arrested are punished will support this professional approach.
Greater Stability
We must note that the police force has, in recent years, maintained a good track record when it comes to dealing with killings by officers for personal reasons. A culture of killings without any accountability mechanism, however, may mean some murders of a personal nature may have gone unnoticed. Improvement in the civilian oversight of the police, a goal that the Police Commissioner and others say they are working on, will help on this front.
When it comes to opportunistic or reckless killings, however, it is easier for an officer to defend their use of force when called to account for a killing. In riot situations, for example, the risk of a justified shooting is so high that, after a backlash following deaths in encounters with students, the police have begun using less confrontational methods or non-lethal weapons. This has been successful in avoiding the death or injury of any demonstrators but, as we saw at Kenyatta University, not in controlling the situation.
Yesterday’s shootings show a lapse in this policy: Were live bullets used because police ran out of rubber or plastic bullets? How can a repeat be prevented?
Some of the changes proposed in the Police Reforms Framework presented by Maj-Gen Hussein Ali to the national taskforce headed by Justice Philip Ransley cover police training. Among the issues to be addressed to improve skills, discipline and professionalism, we propose the police consider new methods of crowd and riot control. Confrontations in which the use of aggression by police is met with similar aggression, escalating minor stand-offs into full-scale riots, are becoming more common. Earlier this year, we saw an incident in Embakasi where police officers were nearly lynched by hysterical men in a confrontation. Only a decision to withdraw, not fire shots in the air, saved them.
Police in many countries have in recent years been reviewing the procedures they use to determine whether they contribute to escalating volatile situations unnecessarily. Increased reliance on non-lethal weapons such as tear-gas, rubber bullets and so on can only help so much, particularly in a developing country like Kenya where limited stocks run out quite quickly. In the long run, it will be an understanding of how to read situations and avoid any escalations — something Administration Police Senior Superintendent Joseph Nthenge showed was possible — that helps most.
It may not always be possible to talk angry rioters into dispersing, but measured responses will avoid the kind of violence where it becomes necessary, even justifiable, to use live bullets.
