Police officers have changed tack in fighting crime, preferring the barrel of the gun over arresting and subjecting suspects to the lengthy and slow criminal justice system, a report by a coalition of police accountability lobbies show.
Missing Voice report for 2023 shows that though extrajudicial killing is largely on a decline since 2022, a huge number of those killed at the hands of police last year are unknown, with the group concluding that they are crime suspects whose details cannot be well accounted for.
The report to be launched Wednesday, shows that the number of those killed extra-judicially reduced by 9.2 per cent, from 130 in 2022 to 118 in 2023, while enforced disappearances reduced from 22 in 2022 to 10 in 2023, a 54.5 per cent decrease.
“Missing Voices recorded 118 cases of police killings and 10 enforced disappearance cases. This is a drop of 9.2 per cent in cases of police killings and 54.5 per cent decline in enforced disappearances if compared to 2022, where the coalition recorded 130 cases of police killings and 22 cases of enforced disappearances,” the report says.
Police dispute the data, saying the service was not contacted by the lobbies when developing the report, hence could not give a comment for this story.
In the past, the police service has always refuted blame of extrajudicial killing and high-handed force in reining in crime, insisting that majority of cops are professional and law abiding.
In total, 128 people were killed or forcefully disappeared in 2023, a 15.8 per cent drop compared to 152 cases recorded in 2022.
In its documentation and verification of the deaths alleged to have been felled by police bullet, the lobby says in excess of half have no known details, hence categorised as unknown.
The victims falling in this lot are mainly men of youth age, hence presumed to be crime suspects in the informal slums.
“Some victims who have been classified as unknown, also fall in [the 19-35 years] age group; it is easier for members of this group to be felled by a police bullet,” the report says.
It added: “The large number of unknowns is because it is difficult to get details of victims of police killings, especially in anti-crime operations that mostly happen at night, with the only verification of the killings being statements made by police themselves.”
It adds that in 2022, 57 fatalities were in this category, but 52 were recorded in 2023, signifying a slight drop.
“While men are the main target of police killings, those in the 19-35 age group are more likely to be killed. Police killed 52 people in this age group in 2023. This number is slightly lower than that of 2022 when police killed 57 people of this age group.”
Most of the killings occur during police anti-crime operations by state security agencies, it says.
Some of the other parameters, for instance, gender, age and manner of death, did not change much, the report says, finding as is the norm in the years past, that men continued to suffer disproportionately from police impunity.
The proportion of men killed in 2023 remained high, at 94 per cent of all victims, compared to 95.3 per cent in 2022 while the proportion of women was recorded at 4.7 per cent in 2022, compared to six per cent in 2023, a slight increase, it says.
In 2022, 124 men were killed by police of the total 130 whose death were blamed on cops, the report claims.
On the details of the deaths, the number of people shot by police was 113 in 2023 compared to 111 in 2022. Two died in police custody last year, which is one less than the three that died in police custody in the previous year.
The data above shows that July had the highest number of killings at 32. This is higher than in 2022 when the highest number of police killing victims was 28 in January. In 2022, July was the month with the second highest killings with 21 cases.
In terms of distribution of the cases per counties, Nairobi is the most dangerous, where young men stand highest chance of getting killed by police.
Some 46 people were killed by police in Nairobi, which dwarfs Kisumu as the second-highest county with nine cases.
It is also important to note that Kisumu figures are high due to the protests on increased cost of living held in 2023, the report says.
In 2022, Nairobi recorded the highest number of police killings, at 53 cases.
“It is saddening that Kenya’s capital is also the capital of police impunity since a majority of the cases of police killings and enforced disappearances over the years, including in 2023, have happened in Nairobi,” it says.
All victims of enforced disappearances in 2023 were men. There were no reported cases of women being forcefully disappeared.
The report also decries the heavy-handed response by police on the 2023 Finance Bill protestors mobilised by the opposition in March and July.
Further, killings resulting from anti-terror operations decreased from 18 in 2022 to one in 2023.
The lobby says the decrease in police killings and enforced disappearance could be attributed to the advocacy the coalition and its partners have engaged in the past year.
Also, it speculates that “either the government has implemented a softer approach to dealing with terror-related cases or they have found more discrete ways of executing victims, which do not raise alarm in the wider public.”
On the methodology of its collection of the data, Missing Voices says it relies on monitors spread across Kenya to document cases of police killings and enforced disappearances and collect witness statements and further evidence.
The collected materials are sent to a central place where the integrity of the evidence is further examined to ensure they are as accurate as possible and followed up if necessary.
To complement primary data collection, the lobby says, it collects data from open sources, including media outlets and human rights groups.
The secondary data is cross-checked with witness statements and police reports. As a result, only cases that can be verified are included in the final list.
“We take data integrity seriously; thus, the cases included in the annual report are verified and, therefore, as accurate as possible.”
