Survey: Rising deaths by police bullets worrying

By Daniel Wesangula and Gatonye Gathura

The family of Patrick Muiruri had one simple wish. “That our children would walk us into our sunset years and see us through to the end of our natural lives,” says Patrick Muiruri.

Sadly, their wish was turned into the unimaginable pain of a parent burying his own child.

One chilly morning, their son’s life was snuffed out by a bullet. The culprit, and his accomplice, as later proved in court, were both young men in the prime of their lives.

In an instant the three lives were forever altered as they became footnotes in a crime report. One was immortalized in a death certificate while the other two were booked onto Kenya’s death row register.

Although this high profile case happened four years ago, theirs is not an isolated case. A 2013 survey by the Nairobi City Mortuary and the Kenyatta National Hospital shows death by gunshots from a police firearm to be the fastest rising cause of death for Nairobi males under 30 years, second only to road accidents.

High risk

“If you are a young male living in Nairobi you are at high risk of dying violently from gunshots most likely fired by a police officer or a traffic accident caused by drunk driving,” Dr Johannes Odour, the Chief Government Pathologist told The Standard On Sunday.

The survey carried out in collaboration with Prof Hassan Saidi of the Department of Human Anatomy at Chiromo Campus investigated 237 bodies where violence was involved and found most to be aged 29 years with almost 90 per cent being males.

Dr Odour’s survey investigated the causes of deaths for those presented at the mortuary and compared these with those who survived such events at Kenyatta National Hospital.

The duo found road accidents to be the major cause of injuries at 35 per cent and 25 per cent suffered gun wounds while about 19 per cent had been assaulted.

Although the researchers did not interrogate whether those shot by police were criminals or innocent civilians it concurs with an earlier study by a former Chief Government Pathologist Dr Kirasi Olumbe who reported that police were responsible for up to 90 per cent of people shot dead in the country.

The Olumbe study which had covered the last decade had for example indicated that in 2001 some 232 people were shot dead by police, compared to 23 victims by criminals, meaning that the forces of law and order were responsible for 90 per cent of gunshot deaths.

For Dr Oduor, police culpability is currently even higher. “Four in five gunshot deaths were caused by a police firearm,” he said, adding that the argument from the law enforcement officers has always been “we were returning fire.”

“Our findings are relevant today and cry for a solution in preventing crime…maybe without resulting to more violence,” said Dr Odour.

The study which covered a one-year period from January 2009 to December 2010 shows a historical trend where gun injuries are becoming a serious cause of death for young men in the city. Earlier this month, the Independent Police Oversight Authority (Ipoa) described the introduction of a contentious clause in the National Police Service Act as “granting police officers a blank cheque to commit extra-judicial executions.”

At a parliamentary committee hearing, the Ipoa chairman Mr Macharia Njeru warned that the proposed amendment to the Act, introducing a clause to allow police to use their firearms to protect property and deal with suspects escaping from lawful custody would only encourage trigger-happy officers to misuse their firearms.

“We are afraid the introduction of Section 54 will only give room for extra-judicial killings. If the amendment is passed, Parliament will be giving police additional avenue to use their firearms for extra-judicial killings,” argued Njeru.

Violence rates

Describing their study published in the August issue of the Journal Forensic Legal Medicine, Dr Oduor and Prof Saidi say because there is nothing doctors can do to save people who have already been booked at a mortuary the best and only thing which should be done is to reduce rates of violence including traffic accidents and crime.

The Annual Nairobi Region Crime Observatory Report for last year indicated that robbery and theft was on the rise in the city with residents worried over the rampant use of guns during such incidents.

The report says crime in Nairobi is a preoccupation of young males, with those aged 15-20 mostly involved in petty crimes such as theft

and pick pocketing while criminals aged 20-30 are likely to use guns in serious crimes.

“The survey found that while men are the majority of violent criminals women are also coming on board usually assigned to noncore facilitative or supportive tasks such as carrying weapons, acting as pawns or lookouts in crimes,” says the report by the defunct Ministry of Internal Security.

The survey found that generally people were reluctant to report crime to because as explained in some instances rogue police officers collaborate with the criminals and in the process a person who had gone to report a crime end up being a victim.