Dear Cyprian,
Thank you for helping to expose evil in our society.
While it's true that our Kenya police Service has undergone a notable transformation, there are still a few elements hell bent on advancing the old oppressive and corrupt culture against innocent Kenyans!
So, the Deputy OCS - Kikuyu Police Station decides to personally conduct an early night operation with the assistance of his 'boys' on the night of Friday 28th June 2019.
By 9:30pm, there's this police lorry packed at Thogoto Shopping Centre. Target: to get as many people as possible on board.
Police officers in plain clothes alight and go in different directions roughing up everyone on site regardless of their usual, genuine activities and bundle them into the lorry. Their boss, D/OS hovers around the packed lorry receiving the unlucky Kenyans whose only crime is going about their businesses.
He continues urging his boys to move a little interior from the main road and bring more people to fill the truck. Whether you're buying milk from the shop, walking home from work or selling ground nuts to revellers, you're a criminal and so you're bundled into the police lorry!
This goes on for about 3 hours and the arrested population is now sizeable. Being a weekend, there are no intentions of presenting the supposed offenders to court within the stipulated time frame.
The police lorry drives off back to the station and of course meanders along the way, as officers continue picking up other petty offenders who are mostly booked as such in the Occurrence Book at the station.
What's even more curious is that the same D/OS later sits pretty in the office for petty offenders at the station, and has the authority to release them after they've unlawfully spent a day or two in the cells and after collecting between three and ten thousand Kenya shillings from each one of them!
The D/OS at Kikuyu Police station is a law unto himself.
He sets a curfew in an area without publication for the general public, goes ahead to arrest anyone found out of their houses within the area, arrests them, prosecutes them at the police cells, judges them and fines them before he releases them.
Question is: Where does all this money he extorts from the already burdened Kenyans go?
You walk to his office to seek to know why your relative / friend was arrested and he shamelessly asks you to pay 10K for their release. If you're lucky depending on whatever false charges they've preferred against your person, he would ask for 3 or 5K.
May he be ashamed and cursed, together with members of this corrupt chain.
Please inform interior CS Hon Fred Matiang'i and IG Hillary Mutyambai to dare check records in the OB at Kikuyu Police Station for all people arrested on evening of Friday 28th June 2019 for petty offences and seek an explanation on why they had to spend a night in the cells only to be released the following day by the same man who arrested them.
What investigations had he done in the same night, to establish that these people were not criminals after all? And if that be the case, why should they still pay for their release? Was it cash bail? Then why not issue a receipt? Can he declare how much he collected and surrender the same to the state? Who is his immediate boss? Is s/he aware of this?
This is a very unfair scheme by rogue and corrupt officers to fleece innocent Kenyans and must be stopped. I'm sure very many Kenyans have been victims of such unlawful arrests and detentions across the country and something must be done about it by the authorities. Now.
Thank you very much.
Concerned citizen.