police officers - The African Mirror

Apr

2024

Kenya’s mission to Haiti: how the 1,000-strong force is preparing for planned intervention

KENYA has temporarily halted controversial plans to send a specially trained contingent of 1,000 police officers to Haiti, where armed gang violence recently took a turn for the worse. After a visit to Nairobi in early March where he signed terms for Kenya’s deployment, Haitian Prime Minister Ariel Henry was forced to resign as gangs took control of the country’s capital, Port-au-Prince. In the absence of a government in Haiti, plans to deploy Kenyan troops are on hold. Oscar Gakuo Mwangi, who studies radicalisation and counter-terrorism in Kenya, takes a look at Kenya’s preparedness to take on Haiti’s urban gangs.…

Dec

2023

By JOSEPH AX and STEVE GORMAN

Three Washington state police officers acquitted in killing of Black man

WORLD

THREE Tacoma, Washington, policemen were acquitted of homicide charges in the 2020 killing of Manuel Ellis, a Black man whose dying pleas for breath during a struggle with officers bore grim parallels to the murder of George Floyd weeks later. Officers Christopher Burbank and Matthew Collins were found not guilty of murder and manslaughter charges, while a third officer, Timothy Rankine, was found not guilty of manslaughter following a trial that lasted more than two months. Ellis' family members and their supporters expressed anger at the outcome of the first such case brought against law enforcement officers under a new…

Feb

2023

By The African Mirror

Kenya: Police officers jailed for lawyer’s murder

NEWS

HUMPHREY MALALO A Kenyan court sentenced three police officers and their civilian informant to decades in prison for the 2016 murder of human rights lawyer Willie Kimani and two others. The case triggered outrage in Kenya, where police face frequent allegations of brutality and extrajudicial killings but are almost never charged. Kimani, his client Josephat Mwendwa and their driver, Joseph Muiruri, were killed shortly after filing a complaint of police brutality, alleging that Mwendwa had been shot and wounded by police. Their bodies were later recovered from a river outside the capital Nairobi. The four defendants were convicted of murder last year.…

Dec

2022

By The African Mirror

Rare gunfight kills six, including two police officers, in rural Australia

WORLD

SIX people, including two police officers, were killed in a gunfight at a remote property in Australia's Queensland state, authorities said, after police visited a home there to investigate a missing person report. When four officers arrived about 4:30 p.m. on Monday at the property in Wieambilla, about 300 km (186 miles) northwest of Queensland's capital, Brisbane, two armed people opened fire and killed two of them, police said, without identifying the suspects. Police said there was then a "siege" at the house, without elaborating. Police said 16 specialist officers responded and, in a gun battle about 10:30 p.m., killed…

Nov

2022

By The African Mirror

Colorado police officers charged with leaving handcuffed woman in car struck by train

WORLD

KEITH COFFMAN TWO Colorado police officers were charged with leaving a handcuffed woman in a patrol car parked on railroad tracks, where it was struck by a freight train, seriously injuring her. The woman was charged with felony menacing over an alleged road-rage incident that led to her arrest in a traffic stop, the Weld County District Attorney's Office said in a statement. Yareni Rios-Gonzalez, 20, was accused of brandishing a handgun at another motorist near the town of Platteville, about 40 miles north of Denver, on the night of September 16, according to police. Officers from multiple agencies responded…

Oct

2020

By The African Mirror

Police general “received gifts and a R400 000 kickback”

NEWS

AFRICAN MIRROR REPORTER “Nobody is above the law,” declared South Africa’s national police commissioner General Khehla Sitole on the day one of his deputies appeared in court, charged with fraud and corruption. Lieutenant-General Bonang Mgwenya, the deputy national commissioner for human resources has joined nine other top police officers in dock where they are charged with criminality in relation to an irregular R191-million ”blue lights tender”. Mgwenya is now the 13th suspect and the 9th police officer who have been arrested and appeared in court in connection with a 2017 multi-million rand tender fraud to purchase blue lights and radios…