Inside police tricks that cornered Azimio protesters
As the three-day countrywide demonstrations started on Wednesday, details have emerged about how police employed numerous tricks in a bid to subdue the demonstrators.
From deploying choppers for aerial surveillance to camouflaging and deploying slum maneuver tactics, the officers were able to battle demonstrators with a significant degree of success.
Part of the police officer's anti-riot manual was dressing up in civilian clothes and in some cases deploying guerrilla warfare tactics to push demonstrators away from the city.
Some wore aprons that were popular with street and grocery vendors while others put up casual clothes, disguised as demonstrators or their sympathisers, but concealed lethal weapons.
Along the Capital City's downtown streets, some officers were disguised as vendors selling biscuits and drinking water while others occupied benches along Jevanjee and the popular Kencom areas as idlers.
The strategy was complex but aimed at keeping demonstrators out of the Central Business District(CBD), a resolve they achieved with considerable success.
Some impersonated journalists and demonstrators too and only swung into action after creating considerable rapport with the demonstrators who would assume they were harmless.
In Nairobi's Mathare slums, an officer who was impersonating a journalist swiftly and dramatically arrested a protester after minutes of a carefully executed disguise that caught the demonstrators off-guard.
This forced the Media Council of Kenya(MCK) to condemn the incident which they said could endanger the lives of journalists doing their professional work.
MCK Chief Executive Officer David Omwoyo termed this as unprofessional misconduct by the officers.
"Impersonation of journalists by the police is a grave unprofessional misconduct on the part of the police and endangering the lives of journalists in the line of duty," he said in a statement.
At some point, police in plain clothes carried stones and engaged protesters in direct combat before finally pouncing on them, arresting a couple after unleashing force.
From Kangemi, Mathare, Kawangware to Kibra, police kept an aerial surveillance against the protesters with officers in the choppers giving commands to ground troops on the location of demonstrators.
The ground officers who had strong backing from the paramilitary National Youth Service (NYS) officers, would then corner the demonstrators as they pushed them deep into estates.
The officers were also backed up by dreaded police units from the Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI) who drove in Subaru Outback cars.
The protesters would scamper for safety whenever they saw these unmarked cars approaching, easing pressure on ground troops.
The officers also had patrol vehicles that supplied them with food, water and other drinks as they battled protesters.
As day one of the demonstrations ended on Wednesday evening, police had managed to keep the protesters away from the CBD and only within city estates.
A combination of shrewd anti-riot strategies and underhand tactics appeared to have played a key role in cordoning off the city away from protesters.
The demonstrations enter their second day on Thursday. BY THE STAR
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