On August 9, 2014, Micheal Brown, a black 18 year-old described as a “gentle giant”, was shot several times and killed by a white policeman in Ferguson, a suburb near St Louis, Missouri in the US.
Hundreds of protestors took to the streets, chanting: “Hands up, don’t shoot!” 12 days later in Kenya, on August 21 2014, Kwekwe Mwandaza, a 14 year-old girl, was shot by policemen, in the presence of her two cousins aged 7 and 8 years. The eight police officers claim that they acted in self-defence.
She had threatened them with a machete and was obstructing them from arresting her uncle, a murder suspect. Kwekwe’s two cousins claimed the police officers burst into their house at night after breaking the door. They lobbed teargas into the house and started shooting. Kwekwe was shot in bed. The bullets shuttered her skull. Kwekwe’s uncle, the man the police allege they were looking for when they shot and killed her, is yet to be arrested. Hemed Salim Hemed was arrested on February 2, 2014 during a raid by police on an alleged jihadist convention held at Masjid Musa Mosque.
He was among a large number of youth, 129 as per police records, who were arrested during the raid. He was not produced in court within 24 hours of his arrest. The Occurrence Book records at all police stations involved in the exercise did not show that he had been taken to any of the police stations. He could not be traced in any hospital or his body in any mortuary. He has not been found to date.
A petition was filed in the High Court. It sought orders for his production. The police claimed they could not produce him because he had escaped from custody. The High Court held that there was no evidence that Hemed Salim Hemed escaped from police custody. To the contrary, the evidence showed that the police arrested and viciously assaulted him in the process. The High Court presumed him dead or missing while in custody of the police. According to a report published in 2013 by Muhuri and Open Society Justice Initiative, Kenyans are five times more likely to be shot by the police than by robbers.
According to the Independent Medico Legal Unit, at least 62 people were killed in Kenya by the police in 2012. The following year, 98 were summarily executed, 15 shot to protect life and 30 killed in unclear circumstances, totaling at least 143 dead in the hands of the police.
The deaths above, resulting from police shooting, are just a tip of the iceberg. There are as many reports of police killings, as there are many cases whose investigations are never closed, and no culprits identified, investigated, indicted or charged. Those shot by the police are immediately labelled as either robbers, terrorists, or dangerous criminals, with no follow up investigation of either those killed, the police involved, or the theories posited by the police. German police shot a total of 85 bullets in 2011. In Iceland, the country with the lowest crime statistics in the world, only one person has been fatally shot by the police since independence.
Between April 1 2012 and March 31 2013, there was not a single fatal police shooting in England and Wales. From April 1 2004 to March 31 2012, there are 23 reports of fatal shootings by the police in England and Wales.
The response in Kenya to Kwekwe Mwandaza’s shooting, in comparison to that in America to Micheal Brown’s, was at best muted. Have Kenyans been conditioned to the taking of lives by the police?
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