How Kenya Police are trained to behave and act like criminals.
THREAD #KenyaPoliceForce

I'd promised to do a thread of #KenyaPoliceForce today. The force is 133 years old and l decided to go back in history, spent my day reading Kenya Police Vol 1&2, written by colonial police officers. I've underlined over 150 pages, taken pics and will drop the thread tomorrow.

I am going to tag @Nanjala1 @QueenGathoni @DavidNdii @gathara @WMutunga @Owaahh @Ngartia @theMagunga on the thread, they can add their take. Share your experience with the police using #KenyaPoliceForce hashtag.Serving officers, open pseudonym accounts and join the conversation.

#KenyaPoliceForce trace their beginnings in 1887. Kenya was been operated as a company by Imperial British East Africa (I.B.E.A.). A profiteer Sir William McKinnon, who in the interest of his business found it necessary to provide protection (security) for his stores in Mombasa.

1896 railway construction begins and as the railway moved inland, Africans were recruited to the #KenyaPoliceForce. Kenyans replaced Indians and their work was to keep order and quell dissent in the work camps and put down resistance from those who resisted the construction.

Indians had a virtual monopoly of clerical work in the early #KenyaPoliceForce because the white police in the force tried to avoid the time consuming tedious paper work. Literate Kenyans refused to take clerical work and it was impossible to turn illiterate Kenyans into clerks.

Prior to 1911, Africans recruited into #KenyaPoliceForce, were given very basic training To remedy this, Police Training Depot was established in Nairobi to “introduce recruits to British standards, alter their diet, mode of dress and acquire new convictions (hate your people)."

From the 1920’s the colonial government had a policy restricted Indian advancement in the #KenyaPoliceForce. The Indian recruits "felt superior to Kenyans and refused to start at the bottom of the police ladder and undergo training with Kenyans."

1922 Thuku and others were arrested. Africans went to Kingsway Police (present-day Central Police) where they being held. Muthoni wa Nyanjiru led the protest. Nyanjiru was among the first to die in a day of senseless #KenyaPoliceForce brutality that left some 250 people dead.

The trainers of #KenyaPoliceForce tried to drill out any “loyalties a police recruit had to his traditions or his people”. To quote Semphill. “It is easier to mold the child than the half grown man, and in terms of race development, the African is very much a child.”

Colonial Police commissioner went on to state that the uneducated had greater qualities of reliability,manliness,sense of responsibility and discipline,while educated young Africans were unwilling to start at the bottom and expected preferential treatment within #KenyaPoliceForce

The colonial government in a 1942 report revealed that the evidence indicated that the illiterate made better #KenyaPoliceForce than did the literate Africans and that “the policy of recruiting literates should be pursued with great caution.

The #KenyaPoliceForce was basically to protect the British settlers,their wives and children, and the grabbed land. Askaris (African Police) were taught how to take care of European officers while on Safari.Colonial police officers, spent their time fishing, hunting and partying.

I will continue with the #KenyaPoliceForce thread in a few hours.We are in 1940's in the dark history of our police and why they can't stop killing poor citizens because they were founded & trained for that purpose, to target the poor. Replace rich for European on this screenshot

Took a break to take a walk in the beautiful Karura Forest with the kids. The forest still stands today because of @WangariMaathai activism. She fought for that forest and paid a heavy price, #KenyaPoliceForce brutalised her and many others as they protected the landgrabbers.

Governor Kidero put drums in Nairobi roundabouts in 2015 copying what police inspector Aston Curry had done in 1929 because Nairobi traffic was a headache to #KenyaPoliceForce.Traffic officer Billy Bailey reduced driving tests from the British system of 30 min per applicant to...

In 1926, the Criminal Intelligence Unit was established with the sole responsibility of collecting, tabulating and recording the history and data of criminals, undesirable and suspicious persons (Africans).-Quote source http://www.kenyapolice.go.ke/  #KenyaPoliceForce

The Burma war in 1944 was fought primarily by British Commonwealth against the forces of Japan. Africans were conscripted. The Kenyans came back from the war wiser, they had learnt that the white man could be defeated. They formed an armed freedom struggle #KenyaPoliceForce

In 1948,Kenya Police Reserve was formed to support #KenyaPoliceForce.This was a vigilante group made of Europeans. Most of them were young kids of the white settlers.This unit used armoured cars and was deployed in trouble spots (white highlands where the British had stolen land)

One community that was targeted by Kenya Police Reserve aka white vigilantes were the Gikuyus. Their land was stolen, their homes were razed and they were moved enmasse to 800 enclosed villages so that #KenyaPoliceForce could hunt anyone outside the villages like animals.

Most of the people #KenyaPoliceForce hired as police reservists were young whites in search of adventure.Tim was 17 when he became a vigilante.He had no prior training, he was given uniform, guns, grenades and Askaris (African servants) to go hunt "terrorists" (freedom fighters).

White women were hired in the #KenyaPoliceForce.White officers were deployed to kill the freedom fighters and the women were assigned to answer emergency calls and clerical work. Askaris wives were also hired but their job was to do menial work just like their "police" husbands.

Colonial #KenyaPoliceForce work was to protect the white elite,their black collaborators and the white settlers in the "white highlands". Officers paid courtesy calls to the elite to assure them of their safety and assigned black constables to protect them.Still happening in 2020

A lady reported their "lazy" security guard to the police for sleeping and letting her house servants step on her garden. #KenyaPoliceForce helped her get a replacement guard. His salary was a cooking pan, a blanket and food to cook for himself. Police approved the exploitation.

Kenya was the dream country for Europeans across the world. #KenyaPoliceForce had a working emergency number, ambulances, a forensics team and the fire station was fully operational. Everything worked in the colony to serve the white elite. Black constables served as "servants."

You know that line, "niko na mzinga leta madem?" #KenyaPoliceForce had a Christmas party in 1946 and they invited young ladies. Dropping the girls home was part of the job. Brian Boulton even recorded completion of task in the occurrence book. He ended up marrying one of them.

In 1993,Kenya officials were bribed and bought cars that weren't fit for our roads, Indian made Mahindra jeeps.Within months,the Mahindras were grounded because of malfunctions.Colonial #KenyaPoliceForce had also taken bribes from a car dealer and bought bad vehicles in the 50's.

Just like today, even during the colonial #KenyaPoliceForce there was misuse of police vehicles and fuel.

The excerpts I am sharing are first hand accounts by officers who served during colonial rule. Coming up is their racism, how they stole from us and the killings they did.

"From the very start of the Emergency colonial officials planned to detain permanently thousands of alleged Mau Mau leaders and intellectuals, people of influence whose presence threatened to expose the illegitimacy of colonial rule..."- Caroline Elkin #KenyaPoliceForce

Baldwin a member of the #KenyaPoliceForce, worked to rid the colony of Mau Mau baboons, as he called them, freely admitting to murdering Mau Mau suspects in cold blood during eight different interrogations. Some he slowly killed with a knife while forcing other suspects to watch.

SUSPECTS WERE WHIPPED, BEATEN, sodomized, burned, forced to eat feces and drink urine--all at the hands of the
screening teams.I began telling them everything; I made up stories naming people. If I didn’t, I was going to die.- Britain’s Gulag: by Caroline Elkins #KenyaPoliceForce

By far the most notorious of these men in Nyeri district was YY. YY raped women in their huts, during forced labor, and in the Home Guard posts. In a gesture of bravado, he also had the habit of removing his shirt while perpetrating acts of sexual violence... #KenyaPoliceForce

On one occasion,“YY stood there holding a gun to a woman's head,”recalled a former Hombe villager.“I then saw her being made to do something that I had not imagined possible.She was made to put the penis of the other white man who was with YY in her mouth and ordered to suck it.

YY would single out women,men, and some of the older children from the village square and take them to Kwa Woodthe name of the execution site... Those selected would dig their own graves and line up in front of them, YY or his accomplice would shoot them dead. #KenyaPoliceForce

Settlers nicknamed the Special Branch “Kenya’s SS” because of its notoriety for torturing suspects behind closed doors. "I cut his balls off, he had no ears, and his eyeball, the right one, I think, was hanging out of its socket. Too bad, he died before we...” #KenyaPoliceForce

The colonial officers,who raped,killed and tortured suspects continued to work with the #KenyaPoliceForce after independence.They passed on their techniques to Kenyans,helped recruit our intelligence officers and those who carried out torture in Nyayo torture chambers in the 80's

When not torturing suspects, the British government used the #KenyaPoliceForce to steal our knowledge.British scientist asked all traditional doctors to bring samples of everything they used to practice medicine, identified and analysed the materials, stole the knowledge and left

A colonial officer was also trained to be a conman. You have to realise the #KenyaPoliceForce were protecting 1000 settlers who had stolen over 8 million acres of land from the locals. So the settlers had to "facilitate" the police to protect them. Still happening today in Kenya.

When not chasing locals from their ancestral land, the colonial #KenyaPoliceForce were confiscating cattle from them for "stealing grass from Europeans farmers and their cattle carried disease that they didn't want to come to European farms and damage high quality cattle".

Laikipia #KenyaPoliceForce

Here is Ken Akker who served as an Assistant #KenyaPoliceForce Commissioner as Kenya neared independence. In his writings, he calls Tom Mboya a"bright boy" and wonders why Makadara hall was built? It was built in the African location to avoid interfering with white settlers life.

Ken Akker organised beatings of people in Machakos Country Bus, razed down their businesses. He brags he didn't write a situation report as required by police regulations. He says @dailynation were pro-police and he had a good understanding with @StandardKenya. #KenyaPoliceForce

Ken Akker's daughter Angela became a police woman. She had spent a year in Britain so that she could lose her Kenyan accent and sound British. The queen later awarded her father, Order of the British Empire in 1960 for his loyal service to the Queen and Crown. #KenyaPoliceForce

Richard Catling was #KenyaPoliceForce IG 1954-64.He was incharge when Kenyans were tortured & killed by police.He gave Jomo Kenyatta spinach to plant while he was in jail.He brokered a "deal" with Jomo that made him Kenya's first president.Jomo was gifted with huge chunks of land

Did you know that the brutal habit of #KenyaPoliceForce grabbing you by the balls was born in Kisii? The colonial Police called it "The Harry Brown Bar Clearing Grip."