Tragic police violence is national conversation we must have now

The killing in Kibera, Nairobi, of Carliton Maina is now part of the year-end report for 2018. Maina was reportedly killed when he encountered police on night patrol while walking home with friends after watching a football match. Unusually, the police leadership has acknowledged the killing and asked for an investigation. Available information suggests that Maina met his death in similar circumstances as an increasingly large number of young people in poor neighbourhoods, whom the police now routinely kill on allegations that they are well-known criminals. Unlike those so many others, Maina was reportedly a high-achieving student, who studied for an engineering degree course at Leeds University in the United Kingdom.

Because police killing is now so rampant, it has become part of Kenya’s violent landscape, and hardly provokes official reaction and only the most fleeting media attention. It seems that it is Maina’s extraordinary academic achievements, gained despite the crushing poverty in which he still lived, that have made his killing stand out, prompting police reaction.