Kayihura using police to harass opposition - retired CID officer

About three weeks ago, I was contacted by a senior officer from police headquarters who informed me about this anniversary and invited me to join you and other officers for dinner at Serena Hotel Kampala. I declined the invitation. I will share with you some of the reasons I declined the invitation.

Partisan Policing
Ever since you became Inspector General of Police (IGP), you have taken the Uganda Police Force (UPF) on a roller coaster of partisan policing which has never been seen in this country.

The mandate of the UPF is clear in the Constitution of Uganda. Under Article 212, the UPF functions, include to protect life and property; to preserve law and order; to prevent and detect crime, and to cooperate with the civilian authority and other security organs established under this Constitution and with the population“In a democratic society, the police serve to protect, rather than impede freedoms.

The very purpose of the police is to provide a safe, orderly environment in which these freedoms can be exercised,” United Nations International Police Task Force.

In a healthy democracy, a police service exists to protect and support the rights of its community, not to repress or curtail freedom and ensure power for the regime. Holding the police to account for their plans, actions and decisions provides the necessary balance to the exercise of professional discretion by police officers.

Accountability also provides a means by which the relationship between the police and the state can be kept under scrutiny; a way of providing insulation against internal and external interference with the proper function of the police.

Under your stewardship, the UPF has been used to suppress democratic protest, hunt down and harass those in opposition to the NRM to the extent that President Museveni has publicly referred to you as the best NRM cadre.

As far as I am concerned, this is a poisoned chalice that you are drinking from.
You have turned the UPF from a law enforcement agency into a highly militarized squad specifically aimed at controlling the grey area between ‘crime’ and ‘polities’.

In this effort, opposition to NRM has been criminalised. It is now considered unpatriotic. Thus crime has been politicised. In the Soviet society, during the Soviet era, ordinary crimes such as theft or murder were labelled political offences with consequently higher penalties.

From your recent public utterances, you have developed the doctrine of an ‘internal ideological enemy’ which has blurred the distinctions between common criminals, urban underclass and the political opposition.

This wide discretion that the UPF now has in determining what will and will not be allowed - the test always being whether it will advantage or disadvantage the NRM - has had serious implications in Uganda.

In the recent Luweero by-election, supporters of the Democratic Party were repeatedly tear-gassed by the UPF for just attending rallies or victory celebrations of their candidate. Such actions have bred public suspicion and disrespect of the UPF which is now seen not as an impartial and predictable instrument of the state, but as a political instrument.

In several cases, it has also resulted in the UPF developing close connections to criminal gangs such as the Black Mamba who raided the High Court in 2005 and the Kiboko Squad which started out of Central Police Station in Kampala.

Critically, the UPF now relies more on creating fear than on building good relations with the population. Policing, particularly of those who oppose the NRM regime, is very harsh and brutal.
The brutal arrests of opposition leader Dr Kizza Besigye using pepper spray, the tear-gassing of members of the opposition is a case in point and the unjustified closure of media houses are just a case study. President Museveni has on several occasions publicly gloated about this use of brutal force by the UPF under your command.

None of the actions mentioned above by the UPF resulted in a single criminal charge that could be proved before a court of law.

The Criminal Investigations Department has been rendered almost dysfunctional during your tenure. During the eight months I have been back home, there have been very many kidnappings and murders of young women in particular, and murders of prominent businessmen around Kampala. Many people in and around Kampala have lost billions of shillings to conmen in dubious pyramid (Ponzi) schemes.

On the day you were promoted to the rank of General, you brought out the Police Band and marched into the Central Business District of Kampala flanked by hundreds of boda-boda riders, none of whom possess riding permits and routinely break every traffic law.

In Uganda today, the problem of improving the investigative function of the police, and the danger of reverting to old style methods such as torture, is one of the key stumbling blocks to building a professional police force as envisaged in our Constitution.

Recruitment, training and promotions
Promotions in the force are currently based on allegiance to the NRM party other than qualifications, performance and experience.

The litmus test is whether one is a good ‘cadre’ or not. Most of the trainees come out of Masindi police training school half-baked and do not know even the simple procedures of saluting.

In Bukedde newspaper of May 29, 2014, I was shocked to see a photograph of an Assistant Superintendent of Police Joel in full uniform saluting with the left hand. It is my assumption that his squad-mates do not know any better.

Since I came back to Uganda eight months ago, I have attended at least two weddings of police officers. I was embarrassed that the parade party did not know proper drill procedures. This brings me to another question: if these officers do not know parade drill, what else don’t they know about police duties and administration?

Some constables are promoted to senior ranks just because they are ‘ideologically clear’. Do you expect such a constable hurriedly promoted to the senior rank without any specialised training or experience to perform effectively the duties of an officer?

Being IGP is more complicated. Since you are not a police officer by training but a political appointee, the best you should have done is to surround yourself with well trained and experienced police officers to help you understand the complexities of this job. Instead, you have taken or kept them away from you by transferring them from headquarters or removing them from the force or stripping them of duties. Some have left the police out of frustration.

I have seen you dismissing police officers on TV, contrary to the Police Statute and Police Standing Orders.

Sometime back a large haul of narcotic drugs worth millions of doll

ars was intercepted by Entebbe Airport security. It was handed over to the then Officer in Charge of Entebbe Police Airport Police Station (names withheld - editor) and was properly exhibited. Shortly afterwards, this vital exhibit disappeared.

Instead of you ordering for a proper investigation of the matter, you transferred the culpable officer away and promoted him. He is currently a full Commissioner of Police, barely 13 years after he joined the UPF.

He has never attended a Senior Staff Command Course. These cases of hurried promotions without any justifications have become rampant during your tenure as Inspector General of Police. Special courses for C1D, Traffic, Refresher and Promotion are rarely conducted.

Police uniforms
During your tenure, you have introduced very many uniforms. The uniforms are just too many and confusing. What is the rationale for one Police Force to have so many uniforms? At a function, one might think they are different militia groups belonging to different warlords.

An unscrupulous person can come up wearing some uniform and do a lot of bad things in it and the public will think he is a police officer in one of the several police uniforms or a new one.

On the other hand, because of the poor training, the police uniform is no longer respected by the officers and men of the force. You will not be surprised to find two Police officers in uniform riding on one motorcycle, officers entering Church services with visible arms and wearing berets.
Sometime back, I found a cadet officer dancing in a bar in full uniform and he looked unbothered.
I have seen other officers riding on boda bodas in uniform. Last month, I found a Cadet ASP in uniform at a wedding meeting at Rock Gardens at 7pm.

No police driver is supposed even to sit in a police vehicle and drive without a police uniform. Nowadays police vehicles on the road are driven by people wearing civilian clothes, contrary to Police Standing Orders. The list is endless.

The traffic department
The traffic department has become extremely unprofessional and reduced just to a money collecting machinery. They impound vehicles and fill all compounds of police stations awaiting owners to pay them bribes. Vehicles which have been involved in accidents are supposed to be sent to the Inspector of Vehicles, not parked in police yards.

Over the years, I have traversed outside countries and certainly, the Uganda police traffic officers are the rudest and most discourteous in the region. I saw a traffic [police officer] kick someone’s car on national television. Apart from being rude, they spend most of the time yapping on their mobile phones instead of attending to the traffic flow.

Police welfare
The welfare situation in UPF is appalling. The living conditions in the police barracks are horrible. Many buildings have never seen renovation since their construction during the colonial era and the hygiene situation is pathetic due to leaking water pipes, roofs and overflowing sewerage lines.

Many police stations are in shop buildings. Police officers are scattered in slums because they cannot afford to rent decent accommodation. As if meagre salary was not bad enough, police officers go for months without salary and even those who get it do not get it on time. Sometimes it is less than what they are supposed to get.
Recently I watched on TV a police constable from Isingiro District complaining that he had not been paid for four years. A report appeared in Saturday Monitor of June 7, 2014 in which Police Officers in Karamoja Region petitioned the Minister for Karamoja Affairs, Ms Janet Museveni. How can this situation occur under your watch in this day and age of computerised payrolls?

Human rights violations
Human rights abuses are committed by the UPF with impunity. Some time back, a certain ASP Arinaitwe smashed a windscreen of Col Besigye’s car and sprayed pepper into his eyes. He was only redeployed outside Kampala instead of being charged.

“The Ugandan police Rapid Response Unit frequently operates outside the law, carrying out torture, extortion, and in some cases, extrajudicial killings” a report, “Violence Instead of Vigilance: Torture and Illegal Detention by Uganda’s Rapid Response Unit”, documents the unit’s illegal methods of investigation and abuses of people’s rights, right from its pioneer predecessor Operation Wembley in 2002 and its immediate predecessor Violent Crime Crack Unit to the present.

It is currently called the Special Investigations Unit. But nothing of it has changed about its methods.
There is common talk out there that when suspects don’t confess in crimes involving hefty sums of money, the complainants ask the police to take them to Kireka where [they] receive ‘panel beating’ which means torture.

On some occasions, suspects are transported in unmarked cars. This is reminiscent of Idi Amin’s Public Safety Unit which operated out of Nagulu Police Barracks.

ON POLICE OPERATIONS

Police operations are no longer intelligence based and end up appearing like the ‘panda gali’ of the Obote regime. I attribute this to the arbitrary and reckless disbandment of the Special Branch Department.

This department was manned by highly-experienced and dedicated officers, whose duty was to collect, collate and analyse intelligence affecting public peace.

The department would then produce high value intelligence reports for the IGP and other stakeholders to use in preparing and executing security operations. People arrested in these operations nowadays are immediately paraded on TV and condemned by the public court as criminals before any inquiry.

This leads to disappearance of vital evidence that would support some of the cases; all in the name of cheap popularity. Operations done in the name of the Public Order Management Act are unprofessionally conducted and applied selectively. Opposition meetings are brutally dispersed and those of the ruling NRM party go on undisturbed.
Most, if not all, police sub-posts along the Northern Bypass are currently not manned.

They were constructed without toilet facilities, yet they are supposed to be manned on a 24-hour basis.

Recently, the Regional Police Commander, Felix Kaweesi, appeared on TV sensationally promising to sack DPCs [District Police Commanders] if they do not send staff to these sub-posts. He had a TV crew in tow, seeking publicity.

It is nowadays a fashion for every DPC to yak into every microphone or TV camera pointed at them. Talking to the press requires particular skills which many officers in UPF do not have. This is why officers like SSP Omara end up making ridiculous statements on national TV. Police Patrol cars no longer patrol the city. They are usually parked at roadsides because they are not given enough fuel, and criminals know this.

The UPF Fire Brigade no longer visits buildings to carry out inspections and educate property owners about fire prevention. Most buildings are fire traps.

I visited one building in the city centre where all the stairs have no side railings, meaning that in case of a fire, people would be falling to death in thick smoke.

KARUGABA CONCLUDES

On Sunday May 25, 2014, you gave a press conference in which you unveiled plans to rebrand the UPF. You blasted the colonial police force as being anti-people.

But the UPF you are presiding over today is no different or might even be worse. I joined the UPF in 1980 and served for more than 17 years as a Police Officer in various capacities.

I never saw teargas, pepper spray and water cannons deployed even once. During the last eight or so years of your tenure as 1GP, these have become the first weapons of choice by the UPF on an almost daily basis.

The fact that we see police officers dressed up in riot gear at Police Stations every other day makes the UPF of today worse than the Colonial Police that you conveniently lambast.

I saw the Colonial Police in action, and I know that they promptly arrested murderers, rapists, robbers, thieves etc and promptly produced them before courts of law, a far cry from the UPF of today. You know this very well.

I sat with you in the same Criminal Law classes at Makerere University.
Key to building the legitimacy of the UPF is to ensure effective forms of control and accountability to make citizens believe that the police are responsive to their needs, and not those of the NRM regime.

You need to stop militarised responses to crime and develop more specialised responses such as revamping the CID and make it a competent investigative directorate.

Given the complexity and sophistication of modern criminals, the CID is an essential tool for the UPF to fight crime.
These are some of the reasons I declined to join you in the 100 years’ festivities of the UPF.

POLICE TO RESPOND

Still busy in Kasese: When contacted for a response, police chief Gen Kayihura said that he was busy handling the situation in Kasese District following the attacks in which about 100 people were killed.
Contradiction: In a short emailed message, Gen Kayihura, contradicted Mr Karugaba, saying that he actually has a number of fans among retired officers. “Gladly, there are many professional police officers, including IGP Emeritus, Cossy Odomel and former Director of CIID, who have a different opinion and are actively involved in the Centenary celebrations,” Gen Kayihura said.
“Karugaba is entitled to his opinion, however mistaken,” the general added, “(I) am ready at any moment to defend my record.”

To internalise criticism: Police spokesman Fred Enanga said the police will respond to the document “when we internalise it”. “We shall inform him and the rest of Ugandans about how the Force is handling the issues he raises if they are legitimate.”

A brief biography of Herbert R Karugaba

Education: Mr Herbert Rheno Karugaba studied law at Makerere University before joining the Uganda Police Force where he served for 18 years, rising to the position of Director of CID and Chief NCB Interpol Kampala.

Career: After leaving the police, Mr Karugaba did a two-year stint as Director of Operations in the Inspectorate of Government. He then embarked on a career in international criminal justice that took him to the Rwanda Genocide Tribunal as an investigator for the UN International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda for eight years.
This was followed by two years in Sudan as UNDP senior programme specialist on the country’s police force. Last year he was invited as an investigator with the United Nations Assistance to the Khmer Rouge Trials in Phnom Penh, Cambodia.