Dominic Wabala
2 October 2005
Nairobi — The battle against armed criminals is proving tougher than ever as the gangsters tend to be better armed than the police. These were the sentiments of members of the Special Crime Prevention Unit who spoke to the Sunday Nation last week while on active night duty.
One of the officers revealed that since joining the force 16 years ago, he had both shot and killed gangsters and been shot at and seen colleagues killed in the line of duty by armed criminals.
He recalled a particular incident in which an inspector was shot dead by a gangster he had cornered at the Mukuru slums, Nairobi, during an early morning raid.
The unit's men told the Sunday Nation that during operations they are constantly having to make life-and-death decisions in a split second. Living on a knife's edge, they are often forced to decide whether or not to open fire on a speeding suspect vehicle. They have to weigh up the chance that they may be preventing a crime or taking the lives of innocent people.
The difficult options
The difficult choices they make in the line of duty, protecting the lives and property of Kenyans, could either end up with them being commended for a job well done or condemned for being trigger-happy. A mistake with a gun could mean an officer being traumatised for life for taking an innocent life or, worse still, being charged with murder.
The SCPU detectives operate the police's advanced detection equipment and every time they flag down a suspect vehicle they have to have their guns at the ready but at the same time exercise extreme caution.
On the night we spent with them to experience first hand all the dangers they are exposed to on a daily basis, we accompanied eight crime-busters to the city's Landhies Road where they mounted a road-block at about 8pm on a mission to catch firearm-carrying vehicles.
Using their high-tech detectors, any car carrying police or licensed gun holders was stopped, but released after identification. Anyone with a gun was found through the use of the the detector which, police say, will sense gun-powder.
At one point, as the team searched a saloon car that had been picked by the detector at Shauri Moyo, their attention was drawn to the driver of a speeding matatu who had defied the order to stop and attempted to ignore the road check.
Suddenly, all the detectives abandoned the search and eight guns were cocked, ready to shoot at the slightest wrong move.
They took cover on both sides of the vehicle as the driver was ordered to park his vehicle by the road and all the passengers to get off. A panicking woman in the front passenger seat pleaded with the officers not to shoot at the matatu, and they reassured her they would not. The other commuters sat in silence, as if in a trance, awaiting the officers' next move.
When the passengers were finally ordered to get off, it emerged that the matatu driver was avoiding the Jogoo Road police check because his conductor had over-charged them.
The matatu was eventually allowed to go, but not before the crew were warned of the danger they were putting the passengers in by their defiant action. "This is how easily innocent people can get killed," an officer remarked. "It is difficult for us to know if the vehicle has been hijacked, or is being used by gunmen to attack us. "We don't have time to wait because they could attack us as has been the practice of criminals in the recent past."
The detector picks firearms or drugs, depending on the electronic card in it. The unit has the fastest response time record in the country, and is well positioned around the city.
Established in 1999 under the leadership of present deputy CID director Peter Kavila, it is made up of members of the crack General Service Unit recce squad.
Quickly position themselves
Whenever a crime is committed in the city, the unit's officers quickly position themselves at all entry and exit points as other teams pursue the criminals.
Their duty is to smoke out armed criminals from either their hideouts or hijacked and stolen vehicles.
In the case of a road-block, two officers, one with a powerful flashlight and the other with the detector, stand on the side of oncoming traffic, while two others monitor them for a signal if the equipment detects a firearm in any of the vehicles.
They then stop it and two others search it and its passengers for guns or any other weapons.
Meanwhile, other officers have their guns at the ready, waiting for a signal from those searching the vehicle. After about half an hour, the team hurriedly dismantles the road-block and packs the kit onto a waiting Land Rover, the job now done for now.
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