The Timau Raid
| DOI | 10.1177/0032258X5302600410 |
| Author | J. M. Oswald |
| Published date | 01 October 1953 |
| Date | 01 October 1953 |
| Subject Matter | Article |
306
THE
POLICE
JOURNAL
obligation on the driver to satisfy his interrogator. Sometimes it may
happen
that
this cursory investigation will reveal evidence
of
larceny
or unlawful possession and the policeman concerned should always
bear this possibility in mind.
In the meantime there are indications
that
a new Road Traffic Act
is about to be born. Perhaps then the enforcements of speed limits
will again become a less complex procedure; but if, during the waiting
period, the resources of the mobile police are concentrated within the
real danger zones, the built-up areas, then little
harm
will have been
done
and
the words:
"It's
an ill
wind--",
may provide asuitable
preface to the obituary of the Motor Vehicles (Variation of Speed
Limit) Regulations 1950.
The
Timau
Raid
By
ASSISTANT
SUPERINTENDENT
J. M. OSWALD
The Kenya Police
TIMA U is a small trading centre some fourteen miles from Nanyuki
which is the most northern railhead in the Central Province
of
Kenya.
It
lies on the main road leading northwards from Nanyuki
into the vast Northern Province Desert and is the centre of a small
farming community who farm the lower slopes
of
Mount
Kenya.
Timau consists of one village store, which serves as a Post Office and
Telephone Exchange, and a Police Post, where during normal times is
stationed one African corporal and three men. The nearest police
station is Nanyuki where the normal complement is two European
officers and some thirty African policemen. Nanyuki is also the
Divisional Headquarters for this
part
of Northern Kenya.
At 1 a.m. on Friday, 26th September, 1952, Mr. K. McD. Robertson,
who has a small mixed dairy farm on the slopes of
Mount
Kenya,
reported to Corporal Muthusi, who was in charge
of
Timau Police
Post, that more than one hundred of his sheep which had been kept
by night in pens, had been slaughtered by a large gang of Africans
who had come from the Mountain, according to an aged shepherd
who had witnessed the slaughter. Corporal Muthusi, who is of the
M'Kamba
tribe and has had some twelve years' service in the Force,
went immediately to the small telephone exchange at the trading
store and endeavoured to ring the officer in charge of Nanyuki police
station, but found that the line was dead. He therefore, with Mr.
Robertson, drove the fourteen miles into Nanyuki to report to Inspector
B. P. Oddie who was in charge
of
Nanyuki police station.
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