OPINION: Who will save Kenyans from the murderous police officers?

NAIROBI, Kenya, Aug 10 – Police officers are yet again in the eye of the storm; this time for the tragic cold blood murder of two brothers in Embu. Benson Njiru, 22, and his brother Emmanuel Mutura, 19 were arrested for allegedly flouting the COVID-19 curfew directives on Sunday, August 1, outside their family shop in Kianjokoma shopping centre.

Three days later, their frozen bodies were found at the Embu General Mortuary.

The heinous killings prompted irate residents to empty their anger at the local police station, leading to the accused officers killing one protester on the spot while another protester died later of gunshot wound. It is a script that is constantly playing out in different parts of the country with militarization of the COVID-19 response that now comparatively claims even more lives than the pandemic itself.

Many Kenyans are nursing serious injuries sustained in the hands of police officers under the guise of enforcing pandemic containment measures.

What is even more troubling is that the outlawed faces in police uniform continue with their business as usual after committing the atrocities. In the Kianjokoma duo case, police brazenly lied to the families that the two young men jumped from the moving police vehicle when results the autopsy later confirmed that their bodies were bludgeoned.

While the junior officers accused of killing the brothers are still at the station, a cosmetic transfer of senior police officers like the Sub-County Police commander and the Officer Commanding the Station appears to be the government way of saying “we have taken action.”

So many questions linger regarding the killing of the Kianjokoma brothers. The COVID-19 containment directives are not laws so what crimes were they killed for?

It is reported that the duo were bundled into the police van alongside other people. At what point were they separated from the rest? Why did the senior police officers try to conceal heinous murders? What is the fate of officers who cut short the lives of the youngsters?

Police reforms were a key pillar of President Uhuru Kenyatta’s main election campaign promises. Nine years down the line, the crisis in the police service seems to just get out of hand. Citizens are being murdered indiscriminately in police custody. Homicide cases involving the police are on the rise even as Kenyans witness off duty police officers shooting each other and innocent attendants in entertainment.

Just days ago, a senior police officer knocked down two people walking along the road in a clear case of drunk-driving. Even more chilling was the recent case of police officer Caroline Kangogo who turned into a lethal hit wonder, taking out both police and civilian targets before allegedly turning the gun on herself.

It is now clear that there is something dangerously wrong with the police service. Reports of difficult working conditions, drug and substance abuse as well as low pay amidst biting economic times are working in concert to turn the service into an inexhaustible killing gang – incapable of safeguarding the security and welfare of Kenyans and their property.

With the kind of rot witnessed in the police service, you would expect line government officials such as the Cabinet Secretary for Interior and the Inspector General of Police resigning from their posts. Yet the two have turned stone deaf, with little efforts to arrest the spiraling situation. When the Deputy Inspector General Edward Mbugua visited Embu, his only appeal to the bereaved family was to help the police identify the rogue officers whom he said would be deployed to his office, where he would personally monitor them.

This is a case of rewarding suspects by moving them closer to the centre of power where investigative reach would possibly be muted.

Since there appears to be no end to the circus within the police service; Kenyans can only look up to institutions such as the Independent Policing Oversight Authority for some recourse. The Kianjokoma murders should be properly investigated and culpable officers subjected to the full force of the law.

The death of the two brothers should not just be another episode in Kenya’s long playbook of extrajudicial killings. Let justice be done and be seen have been done.