Activists report claims police killed 166 people in 2020

 

One hundred and sixty-six people were either gunned down by police or disappeared in the hands of the law enforcement officers last year.

That is the highest figure of casualties in a calendar year since 20017 according to Missing Voices, a platform by civil society organisations.

Missing Voices is a police monitoring website.

Police have already dismissed their figures. 

The groups say the first quarter of last year was the deadliest with 70 getting felled cumulatively between January and April. May was the deadliest month with 25 people killed.

It is instructive to note that the enforcement of Covid-19 protocols was fiercest from March last year with police accused of heavy-handedness and use of excessive force.

But Police spokesman Charles Owino dismissed the report, saying not every person found dead with gunshot wounds must have been killed by the police.

He said some of the executions are conducted by armed criminals but are erroneously attributed to police.

"You know these people (civil society groups) forget that this country has criminals in the street with illegal arms. Whenever they kill anyone, people quickly accuse the police of doing it," Owino said.

Independent Medico-Legal Unit executive director Peter Kiama told the Star that the data depicting was not isolated "but show a systemic problem."

"If you look at the data, it shows that the reach of police impunity is well spread out across the country and not a case of some rotten apples. The whole tree and the roots are rotten," Kiama said.

He lamented that despite immense investment in modernising and reforming the police service, officers still operate with impunity.

Police Reform Working Group member Wilfred Olal said the trends of impunity among officers are far worse than often reported.

"Reforms is just a language spoken by the top brass but not practiced in the service,” Olal said.

Olal is also the coordinator of the social justice centers working group.

He said that despite data showing a gradual escalation of extrajudicial killings since 2013, “the killings have been consistently worse and that they have not been adequately highlighted.”

"The top brass in the security sector only speak about reforms when it is convenient to them but does not cascade it down to the service stream where it really means something,” he added.

“For instance, how many times have we talked about killer cops? How many news stories have been published about the menace of police impunity in the country? And what have they done about it? Zero!”

Olal claimed that government officials only engage civil society actors and speak about reforms to appease donors when foreign funding is imminent.

But Owino said police officers are often made to account for any killings, failing which they are investigated and charged with murder.   BY THE STAR