One reason why these protests have scared the government is the scope and spread. Even if every single police officer is out on the street today and every citizen is, citizens will still outnumber police, easily by a factor of more than 20 to one.
The police officers deployed in Nairobi today are clearly not from here. Ruto has brought his village mates and put them in command of the formations around parliament. I know this because the one in charge of the unit outside the supreme court tried to block me from accessing my office at KICC just now. Such cowards!