How police cover up crimes involving their own

Late Kwekwe Mwandaza. [Courtesy, Standard]

Police have been accused in the past of trying to cover up killings for which they are involved.

In 2016 sentenced, two police officers were sent to seven years in jail for killing a teenager in Kwale despite initial attempts by their colleagues to cover up the murder.

In February 2016, the then Kinango DCIO Veronica Gitahi and Constable Issa Mzee were convicted for the murder of Kwekwe Mwandaza,13 (pictured) who was felled by police bullets at her home in Kinango, Kwale County on August 22, 2014.

Police had initially claimed she had attacked an officer with a machete.

The jailed police officers lost an appeal at the Court of Appeal last year.

The verdict was praised by the Independent Policing Oversight Authority (IPOA) as historic and a blow against police impunity and extrajudicial killings at the Coast.

Kwekwe’s body was exhumed for an autopsy after being hurriedly buried on the orders of local police and administrators.

 As pressure mounted, police invented a new claim that they had stormed the house where Kwekwe was sleeping to apprehend a wanted murder suspect and that she was killed after attempting to attack one of them.

Independent investigations established  that the suspect who police claimed to have been searching for during the shooting was living freely more than 100 kilometres away and was never arrested even when he went to testify before court.

Police were unable to prove Kwekwe slashed an officer and attempted to snatch a gun as alleged in previous statements. 

Still, there are many other pending matters including the ongoing legal tussle surrounding Hosny Mubarak, a teenager who police failed to produce in court on Friday, more than a month after he was abducted daylight by men suspected to be police officers.

Meanwhile the State is yet to act on an August 10 2014 High Court order by Justice Edward Mureithi directing government authorities to establish a judicial inquest into the disappearance of Hemed Salim Hemed following his arrest from Musa Mosque in Mombasa on February 2 2014.

The judge ruled that Kenya National Commission on Human Rights should play a lead role in the Hemed case.

The judge ruled that Hemed was most likely killed by police officers who detained and handcuffed him after storming the mosque on February 2 2014. The police were accused of then inventing cover up stories to explain away the fact that Hemed could not be traced in their custody after his arrest.

When the media published pictures of a handcuffed Hemed, officials invented a new theory that he escaped from a police truck.