Kenya’s cops are spinning wild tales

“One of themDCIDCIDCI fired at the detective, missing his ear by a whisker. But in a quick rejoinder, the detective...chambered a round and gave the thug a taste of his own medicine, fixing the thug’s appointment with his creator instantly.” One could be forgiven for thinking these words are from a fast-paced (if trashy) action thriller. In fact they are an account of a fatal shooting released on social media by Kenya’s Directorate of Criminal Investigations (), part of the national police.The ’s communications strategy confounds expectations in other ways, too. Last year three Kenyan police officers were convicted of torturing and brutally murdering a human-rights lawyer, his client (who had filed a complaint against the police after they had wrongfully shot him) and their taxi driver. At the height of this trial, one might have expected the ’s keyboard warriors to be talking up how careful its officers are with their guns.