Crime rate rises as car thieves get carjacked by their ruthless colleagues

Criminals’ Annual General meeting secretly took place last weekend at a Nairobi hotel. Unlike previous AGMs, which are always characterised with pomp and colour, this year’s edition was marked with a lot of sob stories.

Hiding under the banner, “Industry Night”, the event went on smoothly without detection by authorities, with top thugs talking tough as they charted the way forward.

Litres of tears, however, flowed freely as the crooks shared sob stories of their ordeals in the hands of not police but fellow criminals, leading to calls to have all their colleagues registered to ensure the industry’s easy self-regulation.

One touching testimony, however, was from some three carjackers who recounted an incident in which they had just stolen a luxury car, only to be hijacked by their colleagues whom they described as “ruthless”.

“Efforts to explain that we, too, were their colleagues and had just stolen the car fell on deaf ears,” sobbed one of the carjackers.

Their tools of trade such as guns, grenades and bullet proof vests were also taken away at gunpoint, condemning the thugs to joblessness.

Seemingly, its not just the violent criminals who are only feeling the heat. Pickpockets, too, are not breathing easy. One pickpocket, for instance, narrated an episode in which after a long day of sticking his fingers into empty pockets, he finally managed to pick a man’s pockets which had several thousand shillings.

Fellow miscreants

But while in a matatu on his way home, tragedy struck. Hear him: “When it was time to pay the bus fare, I realised my pockets were empty. Besides my loot, the fool had pick-pocketed everything, including my handkerchief and even my set of keys. My friend, it was a terrible day because the tout flung me out of the matatu, forcing me to walk home on foot,” said a pickpocket amidst sobs.

A mugger also confessed that while waylaying someone he ended up being mugged instead by his would-be victim, a fact that haunts him to this day.

And a woman who drugs men in bars and clubs in order to steal from them admitted that things are so bad that the other day her drink was spiked and all the money she had made the previous day stolen by her would-be victim.

The sad state of affairs prompted the top thugs to immediately come up with a raft of measure to curb criminal activities among colleagues.

“Following the deteriorating security situation, we have completely lost faith in the police. We, thus, are going to form vigilante groups to protect ourselves and our loved ones from fellow miscreants, especially at night when when we will be out there robbing Kenyans,” said a top thug.

“While we, the practitioners in the crime sector, are at work in the dead of the night, we need to know our families are safe... otherwise if we don’t have that peace of mind, our productivity will be very low. Folks, we have no alternative but to come up with duty rosters where we live to offer security to ourselves in turn,” added the boss.

Besides their families, the criminals also want to protect what they have worked so hard for from lazy people who want to get it the easy way. “Why should I let someone reap where he did not sow?” posed one thug, whose house had just been burglarised and the flat screen TV he had had to cut grilles for to get had been stolen. “As a society we must discourage this culture of quick and easy riches,” hissed the bitter crook.

Fact that criminals are now preying on their colleagues unknowingly has been attributed to the fact that the gangster population has increased dramatically. So much so that now it’s no longer possible for them to know each other, even when they are operating in the same locality.