In February 2021, several teenagers were talking and smoking on a street in Mathare, one of Nairobi’s many informal settlements. Suddenly, a group of armed plainclothes police officers approached. One of them, known only as “Baraza,” was a notorious “killer cop,” an officer operating in parallel to normal police who often commits extrajudicial executions in informal settlements, ostensibly to curb crime.
An officer…
