Someone tell police to observe power of silence, in absence of something intelligent to say

Directorate of Criminal Investigations boss Mohammed Amin. [Boniface Okendo, Standard]

I thought the news of the impending retirement of the director of the Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI), Mohammed Amin, was an April Fool’s Day stunt, until his employer, the National Police Service, rushed with a denial.

Here’s the thing: whenever the police open their mouths to speak, the more Kenyans are persuaded about the veracity of those claims. In any case, there are times when those who have tact, and police are not among those, will keep silent because things get more tangled when they speak.

Police heeded this wisdom when news broke that crooks and warmongers were procuring Kenyan passports because corruption is now endemic, and no one believed the inaudible mumbles from the Interior PS, whose name I forget, when he rebutted the claims.

So, if the DCI boss is aged 60 and his contract expired, without any irony, on April 1, then who is fooling whom by insisting he still has a contract to remain in office?

Dates of birth or contracts aren’t things to argue about. But our police force is astonishingly bold in displaying its contrarian spirit. I wanted to say upumbavu, but I restrained myself just in time. After all, ‘tis the Easter season!

Anyhow, they went further with this display of folly, challenging the legacy of the outgoing DCI boss. They said it was a lot more sophisticated than the base acts of thuggery and abductions of innocent Kenyans.

Well, someone tell these guys not to choose how Kenyans assess your legacy. That’s the prerogative of the citizens. And in recent weeks, Kenyans witnessed this blatant abuse of DCI power when dozens of vehicles and personnel were deployed to the disputed private business premises owned by Raphael Tuju.

I suspect it was the mere presence of so many DCI officers and their well-established tradition of abducting innocent Kenyans that seeded Tuju’s idea of retreating to his own house for a day or two, which Kenyans instantly thought was a DCI abduction!

So, yes, Amin’s tenure, whether he likes it or not, will be defined by those illegal abductions of Kenyans.