Do you know where the police shot him?
He's been shot five times?
This is Carilton Maina at a TED talk in 2016 talking about what it's like to grow up in Kibera,
Africa's largest slum.
In the shadow of Nairobi's wealthy city centre,
it houses over 280,000 of the nation's poorest people.
With most of those living on the 610-acre site earning on average 78 pence a day.
In the slum, violent crime is high and access to
healthcare and education is limited.
23-year-old Maina was a straight-A student.
Having been awarded a scholarship, he studied at the University of Leeds in the UK.
In the early hours of 21st December 2018 Maina and his friends
were approached by two armed officers just a few hundred yards from his home in Kibera.
He was chased by police, cornered and then gunned down.
You allege that they planted a fake gun on him …
and that's their excuse for shooting him.
Is that something you've heard happening before?
What are the police in Kibera like? How do they treat the people?
Is that a normal life in Kibera? Is that just the way it is?
That the police are as bad as the criminals?
In the days following Maina's shooting,
friends and residents took to the streets, demanding justice and calling for an end
to extrajudicial killings – deliberate unlawful killings by state agents namely individual police officers
who act without following due process.
The people of Kibera are no strangers to the use of force.
Post-election violence in 2007 and 2017
saw many casualties as crowds clashed violently with police.
Seeking to build bridges, Kenya's police have introduced a new approach:
a community engagement program aimed at resolving problems at grassroot levels.
Here police attend open forums where the community voice their concerns.
On the agenda today, crime, corruption and the killing of Carilton Maina.
As we spend more time in Kibera, locals tell us stories about the police,
accusing officers of corruption, rape and murder.
So this is the scene of one of the shootings, yeah?
Yes.
Gab is an anti-gun activist.
He takes us to the scene where his friend Kevin was allegedly killed by police.
Two years earlier, Kevin had handed in his firearms but had drifted back into crime.
Yet again we hear the allegation of police fabricating evidence by planting a gun on the victim
to justify the shooting.
Just a few hundred feet away, Gab leads us to the scene of yet another fatal shooting.
Here, it's alleged that plainclothes officers carried out an early morning raid
in search of a suspect, enter a house where they found three young men.
Handcuffed they were forced to lie face down on the ground and threatened.
After completing the search of the house, the officers released two of the men.
The third they killed, shooting him three times.
Hearing the gunfire, Gab left his house and spoke to one of the two men who'd been released.
Walking through Kibera with the local police, there's relative calm
but also an underlying feeling of tension.
One thing you do notice here is that you are able to walk around, patrol,
the crowd seemed really friendly towards you.
Yes.
But what I've been told,
it can change at the drop of a hat.
Can you explain that to me?
So you're faced with a crowd of 300, throwing things at you,
what would trigger or cause an officer to discharge a weapon?
What happens if there's someone in the crowd shooting at you?
What happens then?
How do you then target someone?
You find out someone's a burglar, someone's house-breaking …
What do you then do?
What's the necessary?
You wouldn't mention that? OK.
I notice that all your officers are carrying assault rifles, is there a need for that in Kibera?
Police may well be trying to stop crime but there is resistance from within the gangs …
Exactly.
… and they target the police just as much.
The problem of extrajudicial killings is happening across the country and 2018 saw a nationwide spike.
The Kenyan government is making an effort to tackle the problem.
Officers have been arrested but there's still more than 5,000 allegations
of misconduct waiting to be investigated.
None of the cases we've come across in Kibera have seen police officers brought to justice.
Our society is extremely unequal and that's what produces violent crime.
Increasing what we're seeing is that those circumstances are now being met with violent policing.
From 2018 was just over 200 cases of young men were shot
in suspicious circumstances.
Do you feel that the people of Kenya are perhaps afraid of the police?
We did an opinion poll just at the end of last year
and one of the institutions that citizens fear most or rather have least confidence in
is the police
and that's the place that people go for protection.
So you have this very sad, ironic situation that the institution
that we go to for protection is the very institution that we're most frightened of.
I'm standing here outside Kibera police station.
We were intending to speak to the superintendent in charge of police in Kibera about corruption,
about the things we've learned about the shootings …
He's not willing to speak to us because he wants payment.
That payment is not an administration fee.
It's to go into his own pocket so therefore we're not prepared to pay.
The investigation into Carilton Maina's death is still ongoing
and it could be years before the evidence is considered by a court.
Although authorities have identified the officer who shot Maina,
he has not been suspended and is still on active duty carrying a firearm.
Since her son's death, Josephine has continued to fight for justice.
Unprotected by the authorities, she has to suffer anonymous text messages
warning her that if she doesn't leave Kibera, she will be killed.
Where's your mind at the moment?
Are you hopeful that the men who shot your son will be brought to justice?