It happened to my brother he was fooled and smoothly robbed by rogue police between Kericho and Kisumu on April 4th 2022at about 1300hrs (just after Moi Kipsitet Girls, which is a 50km/h speed limit zone). These are the dirty tricks that a gang of about 10 officers applies to steal from clueless drivers:
1. They have someone positioned a kilometer or so before their fake police check position. This contact calls them giving them the plate numbers of all/most vehicles coming towards them.
2. When you arrive at the spot they wave you down and one of them asks you for your driving license, and starts walking away as they inform you that you were over-speeding. (They claimed I was doing 110km/h instead of 50km/h. When you imagine 110km/h at a marketplace full of pedestrians, cattle, and speed bumps, it does not add up. SMH).
3. They have a receipt book which they claim is legal, and is used for cash bail. The problem is the receipts have no stamps, no signature, whether yours or of the officer who charged you.
4. None of the officers has any identification numbers on them, as is required by law, nor do they care about producing any form of identification.
5. They have a book where they write the plate numbers as given via phone by their contact person. They have no speed guns. If by chance you escaped the attention of the contact person, the police quickly scribble down your plate number as they wave you down and proceed to purport that you were driving at an impossible speed.
6. If you cooperate with them you could bribe them for anything between KES200 and KES3,000. This depends on 2 things – the apparent age of your car, and your attitude. Needless to say, if your car is old, you get away with a smaller bribe. Woe to you if your car is new (if you have a new or posh car, you definitely have a fatter wallet, and you should therefore share its content with them, against your will). If you have a “wrong” attitude, such as wanting to know exactly where you were over-speeding, any speed-gun evidence, any police identification…boy, you are getting yourself into dung are
7. If you are not willing to bribe them, then you pay KES5,000 cash bail, and they give you a receipt, a fake receipt. As earlier said, no stamp, no signatures, and therefore it is invalid. They claim that you should go to court on a particular date, but if you do, the receipt won’t help you, because as far as they are concerned, you forged it, and you DID NOT pay any cash bail to nobody.
I saw drivers who just drove away when waved down, (perhaps they had been here before) and that’s the only way you’d escape being robbed by this rogue police. Alternatively, you should not give them your DL, because if you do, you will have to buy it back, way more expensively than your renewal fees for 3 years.
Like every victim of injustice, I feel abused, demoralized, and insulted, and I am left with 2 choices: whine about it all day long, or accept that our police are irredeemable and move on, joyfully.
I am sharing this because I am not alone, and if you are a potential victim, you are more informed than I was. On our way back we saw even more vehicles packed at the same spot, and like everyone with a little more experience, we knew better. Imagine how many vehicles use that part of the road per day: say 200 vehicles, each driver paying an average of KES2000. That’s KES400000 per day, KES2.8m per week!
By Concern Citizen
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