The Case Of Collins Jumaisi Khalusha: A Call For Police Reform And Community Vigilance

Collins Jumaisi Khalusha has confessed to killing forty-two women, including his wife, since 2022. A revelation that raises serious questions about our police force.

How did Khalusha manage to evade detection by police officers stationed across the country while committing such heinous crimes? The recent discovery of bodies at the Kware dumpsite in Mukuru Kwa Njenga estate, Nairobi, has highlighted these concerns.

First, the incident exposes the gap between citizens and government institutions. Residents of Kware were on the verge of burning down the local police station out of anger and frustration. They questioned how bodies wrapped in nylon papers and sacks, chopped into pieces, could go unnoticed despite the presence of security officers. Remarkably, within 24 hours of the report, the suspect was found and jailed.

Our police officers often perform commendable work, protecting Kenyans and their property, sometimes at great personal risk. However, the Kware incident reveals systemic failures.

If Khalusha's confession is accurate, he has killed forty-two people in two years. This raises the question: how did he escape detection for so long? DCI officer Mohammed Amin reported that Khalusha first killed his wife in 2022, following domestic disputes. This should have triggered a police investigation, especially given the likelihood that her family reported her missing.

Moreover, the fact that forty-one other victims were murdered, their bodies discarded in the same dumpsite, suggests glaring lapses in police vigilance. The police discovered the suspect after using the phone of one of the victims, Josephine Murongo Owino, leading them to a house just 100 meters from the dumpsite.

Khalusha was not hiding in a remote area but living near where he disposed off the bodies.

Despite recent efforts to regulate SIM card registration to prevent fraud, the suspect possessed 24 SIM cards. He also had eight phones, a laptop, weapons, identification cards, and other suspicious items.

How did he manage to commit these crimes, dispose off the bodies in the same manner and location, and at the same time go unnoticed?

Two critical issues emerge. First, despite their education and training, our police officers need to improve their crime prevention operations. They must catch criminals before they act. It wasn't the police who first noticed the bodies in Kware, which explains why residents were so frustrated. But now, the police are asking citizens to report missing family members potentially linked to this case.

Reports of missing persons are common at police stations. It is unusual for a murderer to kill people in his home and then dump their bodies without detection. The police's lack of vigilance is evident. Families live in fear, seeing their loved ones killed in such inhumane manner. Reports about missing women, aged between 18 and 30 years should have prompted swifter police action.

Kenyans should not have been the first to notice these crimes while the police stood by.

Secondly, as citizens, we have failed by neglecting the "Nyumba Kumi" community policing system, which has the potential to prevent such incidents. Criminals like Khalusha live among us, unnoticed, because we do not fulfil our duty to be vigilant. He watched football with friends who knew nothing about his crimes.

The DCI investigation must identify those who failed in their duties, not to relocate them, but to remove them from the police force. Cases of missing persons should be investigated promptly and thoroughly.

While there are skilled officers capable of preventing such incidents, the entire system faces challenges, with police often seen as adversaries rather than protectors. We have seen Kenyans abducted in broad daylight, jailed, and sometimes never seen again.

As other government institutions undergo reforms, the police force must not be left behind. The 42 families of the victims are mourning and seeking justice.