Granted, many of our police are not gentle, but why are Kenyans murdering them?

Months ago, while commenting on chaos in Kenyan football, I concluded that Kenya is sitting on a time bomb because the citizenry never shy away from violent acts.

For that, I was rebuked by some readers who felt football hooliganism was a small matter to use as an allegory that Kenyan society is belligerent and can take up arms at the shortest notice.

For a moment, I almost felt guilty, and I have been wondering whether I was too quick to judge, but the recent killings of junior police officers, and deaths of others at the hands of criminals in previous months, have buttressed the fact that Kenya is sitting on a time bomb.

It is not a case of I-told-you-so because there is nothing to rejoice about, but such incidents keep happening because Kenyans love measuring themselves up against the worst examples and fear asking themselves the hard questions.

Following the brutal deaths of those officers, the question yet to be answered is why are Kenyans — citizens of a country where insecurity is rife, where the police to public ratio is low and which on paper is not engaged in a civil war — killing police officers and increasing the number of widows and orphans?

That question has not been asked. And probably there will be no answer when it is asked because Kenyans are busy treating every issue as a fad that is when they are not busy comparing themselves with the worst examples.

When one points out how bad things are, or how they are degenerating, Kenyans always say that the situation is worse in other countries.

As I have always written, Kenyans fear being the best, but ironically, they think they are the best, and if they are ignored by other countries, then Planet Earth will stop rotating and that will be the end of the world as we do not know it.

Question: So, why are Kenyans killing police officers yet Kenya is the most peaceful country in the region; a place where humility reigns, a country full of hardworking people and gallant soldiers who only want to ensure that the countries bordering Kenya are as peaceful?

Answer: In Iraq or Mexico, more police officers are killed by criminals.
Ideally, that is not an answer, but an excuse — and such excuses are given to everyone who questions why things are not going the right way.

Such excuses, couched as explanations, or answers have numbed Kenyans. Or rather, Kenyans have numbed themselves with such lies and they have refused to realise they are not living in a failed State, but a failing one, and the latter is worse.

Kenyans are not just intransigent, but obstinate and in many cases, asinine so much so that they cannot realise that killing police officers does not solve any problems, but only creates them, or exacerbates the current situation.

Bad for business

In many countries that Kenyans think have a higher police death rate, officers are hardly killed by criminals, and if a miscreant kills an officer, then he/she is eliminated by other thugs because he/she is bad for “business.”
In Kenya though, it is increasingly becoming easier to kill a police officer than a convicted criminal, even one who has been sentenced to death.
Many theories will, or can be advanced why Kenyan citizens and police officers are virtually in a permanent state of war, but none will explain why the number of police officers who have been killed in Kenya in the past three years are more than all who have been murdered in all the East African Cooperation countries combined.
Yes, police officers are corrupt and never waste time in asking for bribes. But how many Kenyans are ever ready to bribe, or in many instances offer to bribe even before they are asked?
Okay, Kenyan police officers lack mannerisms, do not know how to deal with civilians and always resort to using unnecessary force in situations where dialogue could suffice.
But how many civilians opt for dialogue instead of name-calling or hurling of invectives when the situation does not demand?
Granted, they are ill-trained, but how many Kenyans want their children to spend years in a police academy yet they paid bribes and want their sons and daughters to get out as soon as possible and start receiving bribes to pay off the “debt” used in the bribery during recruitment?

There is no denying that the police force is not full of saints, or that police officers always let Kenyans down by not solving cases due to poor or lack of investigative skills, but what have their bosses — politicians, the politically-correct tribal lords, venal satraps, drug barons, wheeler dealers that Kenyans worship — done to help the situation?
The junior police officers, the lot Kenyans so love to insult and then murder, are not the ones who misappropriated funds meant to construct a forensic laboratory. They are not the ones who interfered with the deal for procuring better communication equipment for them. They are not the ones who are fighting police reforms...
They are but helpless pawns reduced to frustrated beggars with no self-respect and with low self-esteem that they cannot even be smart in their faded uniforms and look ghoulish, intimidated, fearful and afraid of the people they are supposed to protect.
Then there are the over-paid politicians who think police officers are their personal servants.

Personal employees

They think police officers are second class citizens, serfs, slaves who have to follow them around as they go about their philandering ways, as they steal from the public, plunder State coffers and award their cronies unnecessary Government tenders to supply air to the public.

Yeah, their personal employees who are supposed to accompany their mistresses, cougars, toy boys, boyfriends and sugar daddies and sugar mummies to shopping malls or drive the fruits of their loins and wild oats to over-priced academies.

They think (junior) police officers are poverty-stricken and low-class Kenyans who do not deserve decent or better basic necessities like shelter, food, clothing and healthcare and are people whose children do not deserve to attend school; people who are not needed by their parents, spouses and other relations.

At the end of the funerals, it is easy to blame the police officers for their predicament, which includes poor living and working conditions, but civilians have to know that no matter how badly trained these officers are, if they go on the rampage, they will leave more destruction in their wake than civilians can ever do.