Mr King’ori Mwangi, then Deputy Commissioner of Police during a function in Nairobi on January 29, 2014. He died on February 11 while undergoing treatment at a Nairobi hospital.
The story of the late former police boss, Zachary King’ori Mwangi, who died on Sunday of what his family revealed as surgery complications, reads like that of a sinister but nice angel who dropped on earth unnoticed, lived a life of accomplishment and went back to the clouds uncelebrated.
He is a man whose career reads beautifully in a twisted manner about how he lived to the letter the life and times of a typical police officer—that which is characterised by conquests, controversies, integrity queries, villain, hero and a powerful instrument for the powers be.
Mr Mwangi died at a Nairobi hospital where he was undergoing treatment. The family said in a statement that it will update the public on the burial plans.
“We wish to inform the public of the death of Mr King'ori Mwangi, a retired police officer. He passed on this morning at a Nairobi hospital where he was receiving treatment. The family will update the public on the burial plans,” the statement read in part.
Before ascending to the post of a police boss in the National Police Service, he had been a provincial police boss in Nairobi, Mombasa and Western.
The Nation has established that Mr Mwangi had undergone a surgery but his health kept deteriorating.
On May 2, 2005, images of Mr Mwangi, then serving as the Nairobi police boss accompanying then First Lady Lucy Kibaki, as she stormed into the Nation Media Group headquarters remains one of the most dramatic events of his policing anecdotes.
The media house had earlier reported of how she raided in the dead of the night, a party at the then World Bank Country director Makhtar Diop’s Muthaiga residence where the first family also lived.
Arriving at the Nation Centre at 11:20 pm with six bodyguards on tow—and left at 4.30am— Mr Mwangi could be seen helpless as he tried to convince the first lady to abandon the mission that was turning ugly as she held the place hostage, attacked journalists and destroyed their equipment.
That was Mr Mwangi’s eventful life as he brushed shoulders with who was who in power, for both the good and the bad reasons.
In the process, he amassed wealth that even appeared to baffle him when he was called to explain its origin during an integrity vetting by the National Police Service Commission.
In the vetting panel, he complained that some questions placed to him were like suggestions that he wanted to be the Pope, when he was not even a Catholic.
When he was confronted that he had an unaccounted for flat in Nairobi’s Zimmerman, he responded that “anyone who feels is my tenant in that said building should not pay rent”.
He even offered to enrich the panel with rumours doing rounds around his investment life.
“They even say that I own a fleet of tracks, prime land and a beach hotel. I don’t own the patent to the name King’ori,” he said.
The late King'ori Mwangi, before the Police Vetting Board in Nairobi on January 11, 2014.
In another incident, as the pronouncement of results anxiety set in and hung around the 2013 General Election presidential candidates, the man who was to eventually emerge the winner—Uhuru Kenyatta—could not reach Issack Hassan, the then Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission boss on his phone.
In his 2023 book—Referee of a dirty ugly game—Mr Hassan recalls how Mr Kenyatta used Mr Mwangi’s phone to reach him.
At the time, Mr Mwangi was serving as the head of security at the Bomas of Kenya’s presidential tallying centre.
Mr Hassan writes that he had formed a habit of ignoring calls from numbers not in his phonebook and since he had not saved Mr Kenyatta’s, he ignored several of his calls before Mr Mwangi came in as the bridge.
Mr Kenyatta’s message which he conveyed through Mr Mwangi’s phone was simple: “I do not want to steal anyone’s vote but I also don’t expect mine to be stolen…I know I have won fair and square…just do your job.”
Such is the policeman who one of his close former colleagues describes as “an enigmatic piece of creation that was a symbol of raw instincts in the Service, favoured by Police Standing Orders, his mind and the system.”
He did not join the then Kenya Police Force carrying a failure certificate from his Secondary School education; rather, his entry point was first class honours degree. His classmates in police courses say he always topped the class.
He proceeded to rise through the ranks and retired in 2021, upon attaining the mandatory retirement age of 60, as an assistant Inspector General of Police.
He broke records with the bureaucratic police vaults of hierarchy, when he took less than 10 years from a police constable to Senior Superintendent of Police, at 37-becoming Nairobi police boss—a position that many accessed in their late 50’s.
Indeed, when he was promoted to be Nairobi police boss, his then deputy was 20 years older than him.
A serving officer Mr Cleophas Mangut who worked with the late Mwangi, describes him as “fast thinker, stickler to the rule of law, diplomatic, ruthless and secretive”.
He says Mr Mwangi kept most of his thoughts to himself.
To others, he was as a down-to-earth-generous-man who loved his smoke and the bottle. He is also described as a cop who knew his survival relied on being on good standing by all political formations, insisting to his juniors that they served the Constitution and not politicians.
Ruiru Sub County police commander Mr Alexander Shikondi recalls an encounter with Mr Mwangi and the words of counsel he gave him.
“Be loyal to the government of the day, be humane to all, stick to what the law says, empower your juniors to do their job and above all, be mindful of your retirement life,” Mr Shikondi says.
