Advocate tells of police run-in that cost an arm and changed his life
They beat him up, took all the money he had in his pocket, and later shot his right arm from behind. It had to be amputated.
David Makara’s experience of police brutality is a blood-curdling tale of heartless police officers into whose hands he fell two decades ago, leaving him with one arm.
Though he has done a lot, including studying law and getting admitted to the bar — that encounter with police won’t go away.
Sunday, December 15, 2002, is forever etched in the mind of Makara, a 38-year-old former street boy in Nyahururu, now an advocate of the High Court. and the father of three.
It was the day of his painful rebirth.
After attending church that day, it was time to find a video cassette from a movie shop to unwind as the sun went down. Makara, age 22, had Sh70 in his pocket, ready to pay once the cassette was burned.
The relaxing evening he had envisaged was not to be. A plainclothes police officer tapped his shoulder from behind, asking if he knew another young man the officer appeared to have arrested. He said he knew him and all hell broke loose.
“The officer dragged me from the shop, made me kneel and started raining blows and kicks on me,” he told the Star on Monday at the Kenya National Theater in Nairobi. He spoke on the sidelines of the launch of Kenya Justice Champions, a new network to bring together survivors of police violence.
The officer and his colleague decided to drag Makara to the station, a few minutes walk.
“As we walked, one of the officers drew me aside, asked if I had some money and demanded the cash. It was Sh70 for the video and I gave it to him,” he said.
In retrospect, Makara reflected, the officers had been drinking at a nearby pub but had drunk more than they could afford.
“Outraged with their drinking bill, they resorted to scouting for petty offenders in the town to raise the money. That is how they landed on me,” the said.
They accused me of robbery with violence and said that I had escaped from lawful custody. They also claimed that I was part of a group that had murdered a young man in the area at the time.
We complain of police brutality today, but for context, back then it was worse. Impunity among agents of the state, including police, was common and sky-high. Violence, harassment and intimidation were their stock in trade. Even after handing over the Sh70, Makara said, the officers still took him to the station with two other men.
“At the station, they gave the two OB numbers but not me,” he said.
Makara would be released, worn out from the sustained beating. On his way out, he recounted, an officer fired at him from behind, hitting his right arm a few centimetres from the elbow.
“I started running but the officer shot me again hitting almost the same spot. The third shot missed.”
“I was lucky the bullets did not hit my back because I would have been paralysed and confined in a wheelchair, or even dead,” he said.
At the second shot, Makara fell down and when he got up, he couldn’t feel his right hand, it was numb.
“I walked to the hospital which was just across from the police station,” he said.
Makara’s arm was amputated.
The officers did not give up. They followed him to the facility and chained his leg to the hospital bed.
“They accused me of robbery with violence and said that I had escaped from lawful custody. They also claimed that I was part of a group that had murdered a young man in the area at the time. The same charges were pressed against me,” Makara said.
It was the testimony of Makara’s church members that saved him.
“They said at the time the death, which I was accused of causing, we were together in church,” he told the Star.
Prosecutors dropped the charges.
SEARCH FOR JUSTICE
Years later, a rights organisation known as the International Justice Mission took up Makara’s case, suing the officers involved and seeking compensation.
The court acquitted the officers but awarded him Sh500,000 compensation for wrongful detention and harassment. It was meagre compensation for the loss of an arm and the pain Makara endued.
The ruling was made in 2015 and the payment is yet to be made.
“I’m exploring the possibilities of seeking a review of the judgment because they only compensated me for being harassed and wrongly detained. What about my disability sustained from the brutality?” he asked.
Makara was inspired from his ordeal to fight for the weak and stand up to police wrongdoing.
He was crowned the chairman of the survivors’ network launched by Director of Public Prosecutions Noordin Haji.
Security guard framed by drunken policeman whose gun was stolen
Collins Ouma saw his firstborn child for the first time when he was wrongly imprisoned.
Once he was released, he decided to relocate to his Mumias roots.
Ouma’s case sounds more like a TV drama series in which a police officer uses an innocent man to cover for his own sins.
Monday, January 7, 2013, was a normal shift for Ouma, a security guard in one of the buildings along Moi Avenue in Nairobi.
Ouma, who was 25 years old at the time, was working the night shift.
However, as the night got darker, he noticed someone lying down at the foot of the stairs of an adjacent building, surrounded by people. The building was being manned by a guard colleague, a friend.
Recounting his experience to the Star on Monday, Ouma said that out of curiosity and concern, he left his work station a to find out what was happening.
“When a got there, I found the man fallen his face first on the stairs of the building. He was drunk and it was like he fell while walking down,” he said.
The father of three spoke to the Star on the sidelines of the launch of Kenya Justice Champions, a network of survivors of police violence and brutality.
Director of Public Prosecutions Noordin Haji presided.
As it turned out, the man who had fallen down the stairs was a drunken police officer on duty.
Ouma recounted that the drunken officer slowly got up and realised that his duty jacket, radio call device, handset phone, handcuffs and gun were gone. He then accused the guards of that building and adjacent ones of having attacked an robbed him.
“He rose, accused us and went away, warning us that he was going to come back and have us arrested,” Ouma said.
Determined to cover up for his misconduct, which could cost him his job, the officer was true to his word. He returned with his colleagues and rounded up Ouma and other guards.
They were charged with robbery with violence, attacking a police officer and each slapped with a cash bail of Sh1 million.
Not able to raise the bail, all were remanded.
Too bad for Ouma, as he had planned to travel to his rural Mumias home the following day. In fact, his wife of seven years was also three months’ pregnant.
She had miscarried thrice before. If she carried to term the baby would be his first child.
Ouma would only be released 12 months later on December 19 when rights lobby IJM came to his rescue. It paid the bail.
“My colleague was able to raise the money after some time and was released. then he searched for lawyers and ran into IJM, which came to our aid,” he said.
SOCIAL STIGMA
The lobby took care of all the men, even taking care of his wife who gave birth to their firstborn while he was in remand. He saw the child while he was in remand.
The case went to trial and he and his colleague were acquited.
Ouma said that though given back his freedom, he was still punished by social stigma. Word had spread among his friends and the community that he had been jailed for robbing a police officer.
Life became extremely hard.
“My family and people who knew me regarded me as a hardcore thug. My assertion that I was wrongly framed fell on deaf years. I’m still carrying the burden up to now,” he said.
In a case lodged by IJM on his behalf seeking compensation by the state, High Court judge Joseph Mativo ruled in 2017 that together with his colleague, they each should receive Sh4 million compensation.
But freedom is more valuable than money.
He said, “The fact that I’m free and living upcountry away from the hands of the police, no amount of money can replace it.”
Mitumba shoe seller riddled by police bullets, Ipoa fails, IJM files class action
He tried to hustle his way to make it, selling second-hand shoes in the slums. One day he went out to deliver them to a customer. He never came back.
The story of Brian Liuva resonates with many young people living in informal settlements eking out a living.
Liuva, a 23-year-old Form 3 dropout, was selling used shoes in Satellite area of Kawangware in Nairobi to support himself, his wife and child.
He would meet his death at the hands of police on August 19, 2014, while doing his job, delivering shoes.
His father Henry Agusioma told the Star his son had just returned home from Gikomba market where he had bought the stock for the day.
Liuva had gone home to take lunch, then went back to work, delivering a package for a friend.
He would never return home, at least not alive. Agusioma said his son was a go-getter who was agile, full of life and wanted to work for himself and make a difference.
The father of five said they only received word of Liuva’s death later that evening.
“That was the most shocking information I ever got in my life. I was completely obliterated; my world caved in,” he said, pausing frequently.
That was the most shocking information I ever got in my life. I was completely obliterated; my world caved in
The following day, he went with his wife and a neighbour Irene to City Mortuary to confirm if it was true.
At the morgue, they positively identified the body on a slab. It was torn up by bullet wounds and covered in blood.
The bullets were identified as police-issue.
A postmortem reference number 1964/2014 performed 10 days later, indicated that multiple bullets were pumped into Liuvas head and chest.
Asked if his son had ever been linked to any crime, Agusioma said Liuva was a member of a peace team working with the police to preach tolerance in informal settlements
“This was a peaceful young man with a promising future. The state failed me and the society when it killed my son,” he said.
A month later, he made a complaint to the Independent Policing Oversight Authority (IPOA). No action was taken and no report on the progess of the case ever surfaced, Agusioma said.
“It was IJM that came to our rescue. The state was never responsive,” he said, referring to the International Justice Mission.
The rights lobby documented the case and filed a class-action suit against the state to compel it to investigate numerous cases of extrajudicial police actions.
