Rethink police handling of protests amid new leadership in the service

Amnesty International Kenya Executive Director Irungu Houghton. [File, Standard]

Ten years after the passing of the 2010 Constitution, 1 in 2 Kenyans still believe there is no equality under the law.

The Director of Public Prosecutions statement this week that there is not enough evidence to charge a single police officer after several public violent incidents further damages the reputation of the authorities charged with investigating and oversighting police excesses. Can we expect any difference from the new police leadership nominated this week?

Last week marked a decade since Eric Garner uttered those tragic words “I can’t breathe”. His last breath catalysed the Black Lives Matter Movement (BLM) protests nationwide across the US. At the time, unarmed African Americans were 3.5 times more likely than European Americans to be killed by police officers.

Their mass organised public actions to stop police murders of African Americans initiated important police reforms. Key among them include wearing of body cameras, bans on no-knock warrants, implicit racial bias trainings and police officers exercising greater restraint in the use of excessive lethal force to manage public demonstrations.

BLM is also credited with exposing the depth of racism across many of America’s 18,000 federal, state and local law enforcement agencies. Their protests opened policy reform windows, catalysed detailed data collection and secured compensation for victims of police brutality. Some analysts argue the movement may have contributed to a 10-15 per cent reduction in police homicides.

While BLM has not eliminated shooting of African Americans and protesters, this week Deputy Sheriff Sean Grayson was charged for the fatal shooting on Sonya Massey based on his own bodycam footage. This week also, hundreds of Jewish activists occupied the US Congress to protest US military funding of Israeli apartheid and 39,000 civilian deaths in Gaza. Not a single injury or death has been reported.

Comparing these historical and recent incidents in Kenya this last month, it is disturbing that Kenyan police service remains reluctant to course correct. To evade accountability, officers still operate with masks, hoods and camouflage unlike the protesters they seek to arrest.

Allegations that pro-state protesters receive less violent treatment than the Gen Z movement suggest police bias. The flushing out, teargassing and beating of Zimmerman and Githurai residents on Tuesday night evoked images of Operation Anvil, the 1954 anti-colonial operation, for some of us.

Police commanders are not reporting deaths or injuries nor are they securing crime scenes for coroners as required by section 25 of the IPOA Act and the National Coroners Service Act.

The Independent Oversight Policing Authority complaints that police officers refuse to cooperate with ballistic, digital and other evidence requests as required by the law remained unanswered.

Rex Masai’s mother’s allegations that bullet wounds have been tampered with are deeply worrying. With police officers still investigating police excesses, tampering with evidence, body disposal and cover up will remain subject not to our laws but to the blue code of silence.

Restoring public confidence is key for IG nominee Douglas Kanja, Deputy IG’s Eliud Lagat and Gilbert Masengeli appointed recently. Their leadership will make the difference between a police service that learns and acts on its mistakes or accelerates growing public rebelliousness in ways currently seen in Bangladesh.

Parallel to our own tensions, a discriminatory employment quota enraged Bangladeshi youth without jobs. Like Kenya, the protests were initially both massive and peaceful. Violent policing and unleashing the thuggish student wing of the Awami League (sound familiar?) against peaceful protesters has triggered an all-out revolt.

Two hundred protesters have been killed, four times those in Kenya today and thousands arrested, tortured and detained.

Like Kenya, the surest path out of the Bangladeshi crisis, is addressing economic distress, loss of public confidence in the state and violence on our streets.

While not a new broom, the police leadership must come with new strategies of listening and acting that can de-escalate and hold accountable those under their command that have broken our laws in past weeks.