The police at Kaptagat Police Station have, for the past few weeks or so, been struggling to address a rise in cow thefts in the area. However, today, it emerged that they have been investigating themselves, which explains why the cases were neither reduced nor stopped, the residents have now discovered.
On Tuesday, the police station, located on the Elgeiyo Marakwet side of its border with Uasin Gishu near Flax Centre, was trending for all the wrong reasons. Two policemen were caught slaughtering a cow belonging to a local resident, identified as Josephine, who had reported the animal missing the previous night while it grazed in the nearby Kaptagat Forest.
“I was called and told that my missing cow had been found at the police station, only to arrive and see it had been slaughtered,” Josephine said in disbelief.
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According to eyewitnesses, the cow’s carcass was found lying near the home of the Officer Commanding Kaptagat Police Station (OCS). This discovery followed a protest by residents, who stormed the station demanding answers after months of complaining about livestock thefts in the area without receiving justice.
“We’ve been dealing with cases of disappearing animals for some time. Last night, we got information about cows being slaughtered at the station, and we rushed there. We are struggling to survive, yet someone is stealing and slaughtering our cows,” one local lamented.
After the shocking discovery, the two implicated officers fled the police station. Enraged locals, threatening to burn it down, were calmed only after the area MCA, John Kimeli, intervened and assured them that investigations would be conducted, with compensation promised to affected residents.
The scene was visited by the Keiyo Sub-County Police Commander and the Keiyo South Sub-County Criminal Investigation Officer and was secured, processed, and documented accordingly as investigators from the Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI) began their pursuit of the now fugitive police-turned-thieves.
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