Drama Cops

Tuesday, 26 January 2010 03:00

Written by Lulu

0 Comments

Their work is to keep law and order, ours to abide by those laws; if you fail to abide you stand a chance of helping yourself on the dirty cold cell rooms for a few hours or days, depending on how lucky you are or how fast a friend or relative will bail you out. In one way or the other you will find the police officer on the wrong side of the law and wish you were the law enforcer.

I have seen so many police officers but the traffic police in town will give you a surprise. They might just decide to arrest the matatu driver on that early morning that you have been called for a job or an interview and you are left there with no one to question while the conductor runs away with your change and maybe it’s the only money you had. Try questioning the cop and you’ll spend your remaining part of the day in cell. It happened to me and yes, I learned the hard way. Losing Kshs. 950 change to the conductor who bolted away and a whole day in cell and the next in court trying to get back my kshs.5000 for the bail and Kshs. 2000 on court fine. So I wish I would have just kept my mouth shut, and called someone to send me some cash, but next time it happens wouldn’t change a thing.

Today happened to be one of those fine Drama Cops day and I wish I had a camera because I’ll have put some few coins in my pocket as a freelance photo journalist. A traffic policeman stops a matatu by standing in front of it near the Khoja mosque roundabout. The driver stops and the policeman makes his way to the passenger’s side door so that he could do the usual; ask the passengers out and lead the driver to wherever. The driver being mischievous reverses the matatu and drives off trying not to hit the officer. The policeman doesn’t take it lightly and instead of taking the number plates and making use of his radio call (or mobile phone, they are nowadays high tech; you know) he runs after the matatu and with his police rungu (which I fancy must be a xillion times bigger than his….) breaks the side window of the matatu. I feel like asking him if that’s what they were taught in training then I remember the cold Makongeni police cell and walk away because it’s non of my business anyway!

Enough of the bitterness with the traffic police officer. Just the other day a friend of mine decided to take a walk home from a local pub in Eastlands slightly on the other older side of midnight. In front of him he sees some two armed policemen walking towards him. They stop him ask him for his ID which he had left at home. They ask him where he is coming from and where he is going and he tells them he going home and is from enjoying his money. They ask him where he lives and he points at his house 100metres from where they are standing.

“Do you know it’s so dangerous walking at this time and in this darkness?” one of them asks.

“I have to go home because my wife is waiting”. He answers like he doesn’t care.

The two officers walk my friend home giving him stories of how there has been so many reported cases of carjacking around that area and advice him to be getting home early.  They wait for his wife to open the door for him and wish him a good night. They leave with know hints of ‘KITU KIDOGO’. No nothing.

Which in turn reminds me of how we were saved with fuel by some army officers in the middle of nowhere with one of them sucking the fuel from their car into a can then into our car at 2am and they did not ask us for a single coin. The skeptic in me however can’t rule out the possibility that the particular nature of sniffed car fuel together with girls with long legs…

Some few years back you would be arrested and charged for being drunk and disorderly while you are walking home very sober from an evening fellowship and with a bible in your hand!! You still can.

Still, whereas some police officers deserve a pay rise others deserve to either go home or back to school.

And when I allow myself to reflect upon it, I wonder where Nairobi has reached when you feel that a police officer needs a pay rise just because he is doing his job.

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