Kenya police: Theatre of extortion, abuse

Their accusations were grotesque inventions: that I was selling human kidneys; that I was recruiting Kenyan fighters for Vladimir Putin; that I was a CIA agent; that a lens wipe in my pocket resembled a condom; that chatting mainly with men on WhatsApp made my sexuality suspicious; that standing in public waiting for a bus to Kawangware amounted to loitering; and that I was dressed in ripped jeans like a pimp.

In fact, there was a clear ethnic undertone to their contempt: the powerful, co-ethnics of the group’s leaders, would not punish them; they would likely congratulate them on a straight job well done.

I confess to a lingering guilt that I caved in to police extortion. My gut told me that refusing to play ball or lodging a formal complaint would be nothing more than banging my head against a wall, yet the act of surrendering left me complicit in a system of abuse.

That guilt is sharpened by the awareness that if someone like me—an endowed professor, one of fewer than five in the entire country, and a personal friend of the president—can be shaken down with impunity, then ordinary citizens are infinitely more vulnerable.

Street families 

The ordeal was staged like a performance meant to degrade. We were forced to cross streets at the wrong places, paraded like vagabonds, as if our mere existence was criminal. At one point, they compelled us to walk through the darkly lit Kimathi Lane, a corridor of menace where shadows swallowed dignity and fear became palpable.

At Jevanjee Gardens, ostensibly en route to the station, the leader of the group yanked a whip from his backpack and began beating street families. He appeared to derive a perverse pleasure from the act, as if cruelty itself was his reward. Along the way, a college boy and a girl were stopped and asked to pay Sh5,000 for the “crime” of falling in love. Their tenderness was criminalised.

This was not policing. It was extortion carried out in plain view; brutality disguised as authority. And it is not an isolated incident. Days later, CCTV footage from Nandi Hills showed armed police storming a pool hall at night, assaulting young men who were simply playing. Leaders such as Senator Samson Cherargei and MP Babu Owino condemned the incident.

Yet condemnation without accountability is hollow. My experience at Kencom, the violence in Nandi Hills, and the cruelty at Jevanjee Gardens are chapters in the same story: a policing culture that thrives on intimidation, extortion and impunity.

The absurdity of the accusations I faced reveals the grotesque creativity of extortion. A lens wipe became “evidence”. Loitering was redefined as a crime. In Nandi Hills, playing pool was enough to warrant violence. Ordinary human activities were twisted into tools of control.

When police officers become predators instead of protectors, society loses its moral compass. Extortion and assault erode public trust, strip citizens of dignity and normalise abuse. Worse, they create a climate of fear where silence becomes survival.

Kenya cannot afford to let its policing institutions rot under corruption and brutality. Independent oversight bodies must be empowered to investigate and prosecute rogue officers. Transparent complaint mechanisms must protect victims from retaliation. And a cultural reform within policing must shift from intimidation to service.

The tragedy is that these abuses are not hidden. They happen in public, in front of witnesses, sometimes even captured on camera. Yet the perpetrators act with impunity, confident that their uniforms and IDs shield them from accountability.

What happened to me, to the youth in Nandi Hills, to the street families at Jevanjee Gardens, and to the young lovers are symptoms of a system that has lost its moral compass. Unless we confront this crisis, the line between law enforcement and lawlessness will continue to blur—at the expense of citizens’ freedom, dignity and trust.

And so I make a vow to myself: never to visit Kenya again, although it is my country of birth. To return would be to risk my dignity, my safety and my humanity in a place where authority has become indistinguishable from criminality.

My exile is not just personal; it is a protest. It is a refusal to normalise abuse. It is a declaration that until Kenya confronts its policing crisis, its citizens—at home and abroad—will continue to live under siege.

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The writer is a professor of English and comparative literature at Northwestern University, US. [email protected].