It’s time we cured the cancer of police brutality

Utumishi Kwa Wote, so goes our police motto. It's interesting that a department can have such a reassuring motto, and yet the personnel are a vanguard of a disservice to all. The majority wallow in the miasma of colonial administration. We promulgated a constitution in 2010 that provided a comprehensive Bill of Rights. These rights listed in the constitution are nothing but a reference as far as the police force is concerned. They only glance at the rights but do not abide by them.

Police brutality is legally defined as a civil rights violation where officers exercise undue or excessive force against a civilian. For Kenyans, this has been the norm whenever police officers are involved. When the president declared a curfew as one of the measures to combat COVID-19, it automatically meant involving the men in blue in the fight. Kenyans perceive the police as oppressors rather than protectors or enforcers of the law. Thus, immediately after this announcement, social media was awash with memes indicating how police will unleash violence. This, in itself, proved that we have normalized police brutality. But we cannot be reproached for harboring such intuition. Perhaps it's the way they do it repeatedly that has made it appear normal.