In the recent past, the media has been awash with reports of police officers being linked to various offences; the officers in uniform have been cases related with abduction, bribery, extortion, misconduct among many other miscreant acts.
It is not surprising that recently a self-confessed criminal revealed that he and other criminal gangs have elements in the police force with whom they secretly abet crime.
This inevitably means that the criminals who make our lives difficult in the city and other places are aided by the police.
Indeed, this could be one of the reasons as to why in most cases you have the thugs reported to police and there will be no action taken, and many are the times when an arrest is carried out and hardly before the complainant leaves the station the suspect is set free.
Not surprising then that even one of their own, Assistant Superintendent of Police (ASP) Muhammad Kirumira accused the police of dealing with criminals.
The police are mandated by law to keep law and order meaning our security and that of our property and that of our visitors like investors and tourists.
However if the police are ones that are perpetuating crime, it leaves a lot to be desired as a nation.
One of the dangers of this is that it is likely to scare away investors and tourists from investing and visiting Uganda respectively.
No wonder some of them have even been accused of conning investors which creates a very bad image for the force
I was not born during the Amin regime and in the second Obote regime in the early 1980 where there were reports of armed forces harassing civilians in various forms.
This is about the same situation that we find ourselves in 32 years later yet we boast of liberation coupled with professionalization and discipline of the security forces.
However, my take is that the police has over the years concentrated on ‘political policing’ as he ran after Dr. Kizza Besigye and Lord Mayor Erias Lukwago while focusing less on civil policing.
By so doing some officers got the chance to create cliques which inevitably led them into crime for survival, including allegedly fleecing investors.
Against such a background, the Inspector General of Police Gen. Kale Kayihura ought to act very fast before the situation worsens otherwise we are bound to lose out on many investment opportunities if this goes on.
