Why we broke into Mildred Atty's house and killed her dogs - Police

Piece by: Grace Kerongo
Lifestyle

Nairobi police boss Philip Ndolo's has released an official statement on Mildred 'Atty' Atieno's arrest.

Atty is one of the admins of the popular Facebook's page called Buyer Beware.

She was arrested today morning when Police threw teargas into her house, killed her dogs and broke her door to gain access.

The police boss in a statement explained

“The police officers identified themselves and asked the suspect to open her door so that they could effect an arrest, but the suspect refused to allow the officers in. She locked her door from the inside, making it difficult for the arrest to be made.

Honestly, what would you do if you are a law enforcement officer, and a suspect refuses to let you arrest her over alleged crime? The officers assigned to arrest her followed the lawful procedure – one: identify yourself, two: reveal why you are at the suspect’s premises, three: ask him or her to surrender, four: should he or she refuse, then use any means possible to effect the arrest. That is what we did, and use of teargas to smoke out an uncooperative suspect is not illegal in any way.

We have arrested her in connection with incitement to violence. On Friday, she recorded herself on video asking a uniformed police officer to leave her car on grounds that no law enforcement officer is allowed to enter a motorist’s car to make an arrest, which is not true, though. After managing to throw the officer out of her car, she started inciting the public against the law officer. Just, what if the crowd had lynched the police officer, what would we be talking about now?

The said-offence is not the only wrong-doing we have arrested Owiso for. She has several other cases in different police stations that we are following up on.