Some 148 people were either killed or disappeared by the police last year, data from Missing Voices, a coalition of human right entities monitoring police operations, shows.
The number includes 128 deaths and 15 victims of enforced disappearance. Of the 15, one person was later found alive.
The data depicts the number of the alleged killings and disappearances per month for the whole year.
Police have dismissed the figures and denied involvement.
Part of the 2022 data includes tens of bodies that were retrieved from River Yala earlier in the year, with crime buster officers being blamed.
It was also the year when a container was discovered in which police officers allegedly kidnapped and slaughtered civilians they suspected of crime.
When reached for a comment, new police spokesperson Resila Onyango told the Star to "seek details from those people who have generated those numbers."
"Those are not our numbers and you should get the details from those [organisations]," she said.
Asked whether the service noted any cases of allegations of unlawful killing by cops, Onyango directed the Star to talk to the Internal Affairs Unit or Ipoa.
The police have often dismissed the data from the site on alleged extrajudicial killings as inaccurate, generalised and does not put consideration to full facts of the individual cases.
Mary Wanjiku’s son James Wanjohi worked as a tout in a matatu plying Dandora, Eastleigh, Nairobi CBD route. On October 18, last year, she lost the 18-year-old son, making him part of the statistics.
Wanjohi had been claimed to be a phone snatcher and crime busters in the area had complained to the mother. But Wanjiku’s issue is that the police ought to have arrested him and taken him to court, she told a local social justice activist in the area.
“I would have loved to have my son rot in jail forever if he was a criminal. Now he is gone forever in the grave thanks to the police bullet. I wish he was given another chance to try and reform his ways,” she said.
According to the data, January and July last year saw the highest number of extrajudicial killings at 28 and 21 respectively.
February and June followed closely at 14 and 13 respectively.
March had nine, April (three), May (seven), August (seven), and September (six). October, November and December had nine, four and five respectively.
For enforced disappearance, six cases got documented as the highest in the year. It was in the month of October.
The 2022 numbers show a sharp decline in the extrajudicial killing and disappearances incidents, especially relative to 2021.
In 2021, the coalition recorded 219 incidents of killings and disappearance in which police were the alleged perpetrators.
Out of the number, 187 were as a result of police killings and 32 disappeared in police custody, the site said.
2020 saw some 168 deaths and enforced disappearances recorded by the lobbies.
Their data shows that of this number, 158 were as a result of police killings and 10 disappeared in police custody.
President William Ruto has declared ending extrajudicial killings and enforced disappearance among his top priorities.
He had asked police oversight body Ipoa to come up with succinct plans on how to combat the menace and have it end in the country.
Among his first actions in office was to occasion change in the police top brass and disband a special DCI unit which was blamed for impunity and extrajudicial killings.
"I have sat down with the commander of police from the IG downwards and we have agreed that they will operate within the law...they are licensed to use firearms to deal with criminals and defend themselves too. If they don't defend themselves they won't be there to sort out the criminals," he said earlier this month.
"So Ipoa has our support, we are going to fund and support them. In fact, already I have told them that they must begin to give us a program on the investigation of how we ended up with close to 200 people being killed and dumped," he added.
-Edited by SKanyara
