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Monday, March 19, 2007

Cops For Hire?

It is now emerging that senior managers at the Nation media group organized for CID officers to pick up and harass former crime editor Stephen Muiruri without having a shred of evidence against him.

Knowing how the police work in this country, Kenyans cannot help but ask, did they pay for the services? And if they did, how much did they pay to get the CID off important and urgent cases involving escalating crime (where the lives of Kenyans are at stake) to handle what would at worst be a civil matter?
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Only God knows how many times the giant media house has used the CID department over the years to harass and intimidate Kenyans so as to meet various objectives, both personal and corporate.

In the year 1999, this blogger was running a budding newsletter that was extremely popular in Nairobi. Several times I received warnings from friends and other persons who were more streetwise than I was that my commercial activities were affecting the operations of the media giant. I laughed off the suggestions. How could a tiny operation like mine selling a popular newsletter dealing in social issues for Kshs 10/- affect a major newspaper in the country. My advisors insisted that using my unique system of sales where I had hired my own vendors, when a person purchased my 10 bob publication, chances of then purchasing a daily newspaper were slim. It looked plausible but I still bushed aside the advice. I lived to deeply regret it.

It started with the harassment of some of my vendors that started being regularly picked up and thrown into police cells by city council askaris for all sorts of trumped up charges. One vendor was charged with urinating on a side street close to our offices, which he denied and I found strange because we had toilet facilities in our offices a few metres from where the alleged offence occurred. Still I did not suspect anything believing that the notoriously corrupt city council askaris were just sour because I had a policy of NOT bribing them and always chose the more inconvenient policy of having my vendors charged in the council courts. I would then pay the fines on their behalf and the matter would end there. How naïve I was in those days not to have suspected a thing until it was too late!!

One afternoon several CID officers burst into our premises armed and like they were arresting a very dangerous armed criminal and demanded to see a "registration certificate" for our publication. According to the rather complex Books and newspapers act no such certificate exists. They gathered printing plates and also picked up one of my employees who was then used to look for me all over town (cell phones had not yet arrived then). They even burst into the church where I had been attending a prayer meeting moments before in search of me (I had left only minutes before they arrived on hearing news of the arrest and had headed to CID headquarters, Nairobi area.).

To spare you the details, the CID officers wasted a lot of our time before we finally proved to them with copies of several documents that our publication was actually duly registered. To this day I have no idea why the CID or those who sent them did not bother to go to the AGs chambers for what would have been a 5-minute search at most, that would have immediately told them whether or not we were registered. Technically there is no such thing as registration, all a publication has to do is file surety bonds for the publisher and printer and make annual returns. Instead the CID officers chose to harass and intimidate us. I will not go into the strange telephone conversation that I overheard between the CID boss running this entire operation and somebody on the other end of the line that they were apparently "reporting to."

But what was very strange is that at the time, there were numerous other "copycat publications" that were trying to replicate our unique door-to-door vendor system at the time. None of them were registered and none of them received any visit from the CID officers.

It will interest you to know that finally whoever it was at the Nation who wanted to fix me and my popular newsletter finally achieved their objective, albeit without the help of the CID. Some ingenious street tactics were used. But I digress.

I have a simple question to ask. Judging by the way the senior managers have used the CID to hit back at Muiruri, should Muiruri not look for money and use the same officers to pick up the offending senior Nation editors and have them harassed for harassing him? Is that the way law and order is supposed to work in Kenya?


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2 comments:

  1. Ours is a society of two classes, the ordinary Kenyan (mwannchi) and the moneyed (wenyeinchi). If we ever imagined that only politicians are selfish and corrupt, then we have been disabused of that fallacy. We now know better that even the media managers only shout thief with their pens (as if they write!) while their hands are firmly stuck in the cookie jar. The sum total of all these episodes odf sleeze is that Kenya is fast slipping into a banana republic.

    Kenyan version of corruption is unparalleded. Personalized rule only produces obtuse abuse of power. Both the media managers and the CID errand boys are simply engaing in abuse of power. Ours being a nation bereft of institutions and the the moneyed are not sleeping but simply taking advanatge of individualized rule to another level.

    The practice of hirring cops to harass your perceived enemeies at a fee gives the clearest glimpse into the pillars behind souring rate of crime and insecurity in our country. It's all about business and no amount of blood letting will shame these deveils. The cops must maintain status quo to remain relevant lest they stangle the goose laying the golden eggs. Stories of gun for hire from policemen to gangs is no secret and we better accept it since we are all at the mercy of the remaining Matheris.

    The CID chaps are still living in the old days of being used to run errands at a fee. They shamelessly still entertain the ffarce that their presence make your knees go jelly. They should know better especially when dealing with an insider like Muiruri who happens to nitty gritty of who pulls what punches from Vigilance house. It wouldn't be far-fetched nor naive to imagine that every cop from the constable to Ali have a price and the highest bidder (politians) in a roll. God save Kenya from herself.

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  2. Nation managers probably figured that if u lock up Muiruri for three days, and the internet buzz goes all quiet, ha! then you've nailed the bugger!

    That's why their "control experiment" went awry with his release after a short while...

    ReplyDelete

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