Give crime preventers police slots - Museveni

Kampala. President Museveni has said one in every 10 of the new police recruits should be a crime preventer.
“If crime preventers have the qualifications, they should be given priority because they have shown dedication,” the President said at the commemoration of the Police Day at Kololo Independence Grounds in Kampala yesterday.
Reserving 10 per cent of police recruitment for eligible crime preventers, according to Mr Museveni, would help address some of their job concerns since all cannot be paid monthly stipends.
Police rushed recruitment of crime preventers, who Opposition politicians branded “regime militias”, in the run-up to the February 2016 elections.
Although in theory they are said to be impartial and tailored to community policing, most of the crime preventers, who by police accounts number up to 11 million, were passed out while dressed in campaign T-shirts of the ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM) party and at ceremonies presided over by President Museveni.
In later months, they took political sides against the Opposition while some of the crime preventers have been killed or arrested while allegedly committing crimes.
Mr Museveni said since the State does not have resources to pay the crime preventers in the current circumstance, they should start up a savings cooperative where the government will inject funds.

Other benefits
He also promised to talk to Gen Caleh Akwandanaho alias Salim Saleh, who heads the Operation Wealth Creation, so that the crime preventers can benefit from some of its programmes.
The Inspector General of Police, Gen Kale Kayihura, said crime in the country is just a symptom of other problems in the society that should be solved.
“If we are going to another level, you should address the root cause of crime,” he said, without specifying who should do it. Citing land wrangles and alcoholism, he added: “There is a crisis in the families all over the country. Domestic violence is a big problem [and] murders within the families, especially in the countryside.”
Earlier, President Museveni said masterminds of post-election public demonstrations in Kampala and major towns hoped to ensnare security personnel into killing civilians so as to discredit the government.
“That did not happen…let me congratulate the police for using soft methods that defeated trouble makers,” he said.
After civilians died from bullet wounds in both the 2009 Buganda riots and the 2011 Walk-to-Work demonstrations, the government under pressure from rights groups and donors, revised its methods to use teargas in crowd control or detain crowd-pulling political leaders mostly at their homes under preventive arrest.
The new approach he called “soft method”, Mr Museveni said, helped avert possible bloodshed and chaos, resulting in the defeat of its schemers countrywide. This claim notwithstanding, police came under tighter scrutiny after Gen Kayihura said they had authorised their on-duty officers to cane people during crowd control as long as they were not hit in sensitive parts that could result in death.
Officers who led such operations, which targeted supporters of former presidential candidate Kizza Besigye, are facing trial and some of the victims brought torture charges against the IGP himself, but later withdrew the complaints.

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