High Court Judge Bahati Mwamuye has ruled that police officers deployed to manage public assemblies, demonstrations, or picketing must be in uniform and must not conceal their faces.

The ruling came in a case filed by the Law Society of Kenya (LSK), which sued a police officer, Isaiah Ndumba Murangiti, alleging he was responsible for the killing of protester Rex Masai.

LSK also asked the court to bar the Inspector General of Police from deploying plain clothes officers to control protests, arguing that such deployments violate constitutional rights.

According to LSK, many incidents of police brutality and extrajudicial killings are linked to officers without identification or uniforms, making accountability difficult.

The court heard that plain clothes officers blended in with peaceful demonstrators exercising their rights under Article 37 of the Constitution, making it impossible to distinguish them from the public.

These officers did not carry any form of identification.