Kenya adopting dangerous gun culture
What you need to know:
- Whatever the case, one thing for sure is that Kenya, either by design or default, is adopting a very dangerous gun culture.
- More worrying still is that 67 per cent of the killings i.e. 1,254 were by law enforcement officers.
- Put another way, Kenyans get killed and no one demands an explanation, they just become another statistic in another report.
These days "breaking news" is dominated by strikes, demos and industrial suites. A while ago, every other message was about the killing of "suspects" and "armed bandits" by the security forces. Not anymore. Not that the killings have stopped, just that it is old news and an everyday event.
Picture the last time that the killing of robbers made front-page news. Extra-judicial killings or deaths at the hands of bandits rarely make headlines unless, of course, the victim is well known or more than two policemen died.
Why the indifference? Have we lost our sense of outrage? Have we become anesthetised due to the growing crime rate or paralysed by our inability to hold law enforcement agents accountable?
Whatever the case, one thing for sure is that Kenya, either by design or default, is adopting a very dangerous gun culture.
In the process life is becoming cheap, killings are acceptable and rarely investigated and killers can be hired for as little as Sh5,000.
Off-duty police and retired soldiers are the most popular assassins for hire.
All of this came home to me after reading a report by the Independent Medico Legal Unit, titled Guns: Our Security: Our Dilemma.
The very detailed research focused on post-mortem reports from death by firearms in six urban centres: Mombasa, Nairobi, Nakuru, Kakamega, Kisumu and Nyeri during the period 2009-13. The unit looked at 1,873 killings and discovered that 96 percent of them occurred in Nairobi. That makes the nation’s capital a very dangerous place.
WAR ON CRIME
More worrying still is that 67 per cent of the killings, i.e., 1,254, were by law enforcement officers. This makes disturbing reading when you consider that only 259, or 20 per cent, of the deaths were at the hands of robbers. One can then claim that you are five times more likely to die at the hands of police than criminals in Kenya. Others, of course, may see these figures as confirmation that police are winning the war on crime.
However, what is critical in this research is that post-mortem reports and the P23A forms prepared by police indicate a high degree of unprofessionalism in recording the cause of death and justification for using firearms.
In the police report Form P23A no reason was recorded in 790 of the police cases for shooting suspects dead. In the autopsy reports, pathologists recorded "a high rate of missing data". Sloppy reports and the absence of scientific evidence not only indicate indifference to the killing of Kenyans.
NO ACCOUNTABILITY
It also reveals that there are no accountability systems in any oversight mechanism. Put another way, Kenyans get killed and no one demands an explanation, they just become another statistic in another report.
This week, police vetting will resume. It has been a flawed exercise from the outset, focusing on cops' bank accounts and illicit affairs.
Where are the families of these 1,254 recorded by the medical legal unit, the parents of Mungiki victims and the 435 killed by police in the post-election violence?
Where, too, are the families of police slaughtered in Baragoi and Kapedo? Do we still believe in the sacredness of life and the duty to investigate every killing?
[email protected] @GabrielDolan1
