membership or hierarchy. Many members state that at the height of its influence, the group could claim as many as 500,000 members and received substantial sums of money. Many Kenyans debate whether the group's influence in Nairobi is waning or is on the rise. Extortion and ethnic violence Mungiki operates most extensively in Mathare, Nairobi's second largest slum, where poverty and crime are pronounced, but it is also in Kayole, Murang'a County and Ruai, Nairobi [waithaka, dagoretti], Kinoo and Westlands. A recent Inter Press Service article vividly describes Mungiki operations in that slum as essentially constituting a "street gang" or a criminal network that contributes to, and feeds off of, an environment plagued by a state of perpetual security crisis. Every resident of the slum pays a variable sum of money to the organization, in exchange for protection against theft and property damage. In addition, the gang "mans" public toilets, and charges a fee for use of the facilities. Such acts of extortion, along with the general lack of effective local law enforcement, have generally enraged residents of Mathare. More than 50 people died in 2002 in clashes involving the sect and owners of matatus in Nairobi alone. In 2002 the sect was banned and in February 2003, the sect was in the news following two days of clashes with Nairobi police which left at least two officers dead and 74 sect members in police custody. In June 2007, the Mungiki embarked upon a murderous campaign to instil fear by beheading matatu drivers, conductors, and Mungiki defectors, and those who refuse their recruitment, drawing an armed response from Kenyan security forces, who stormed the Mathare area. Some 100 people died in the operation. Mungiki has also been linked to the murder of a family in the United States in which Mrs Jane Kurua, 47, and her two daughters were killed; the case is still under investigation by the FBI. On 12 July 2007 Kenyan authorities reported that Mungiki decapitated and mutilated the body of a two-year-old boy, possibly as part of a ritual. It is alleged that Mungiki members participated in targeted violence against ethnic Luos around the time of the disputed December 2007 presidential elections. Police response In November 2007, a human-rights group called the Oscar Foundation Free Legal Aid Clinic-Kenya reported that in the five years up to August 2007, Kenyan police had killed over 8,000 people in