Is the CID the sick man of the police?

The Criminal Investigations Department of the police is mandated to investigate crimes to their logical conclusion. However, as Saturday Monitor’s Andrew Bagala reports even the police chief has lost faith in the department.

At a press conference to launch the Annual Police Crime Report 2010 a couple of weeks ago, a reporter asked a question: “What is the status of the investigations on the Budo Junior School inferno?”

The Inspector General of Police, Maj. Gen. Kale Kayihura, did not have an answer. He passed on the question to the Criminal Investigations Director, Mr Edward Ochom. Mr Ochom was evasive about an inferno that left 20 school kids dead in April 2008.

So Gen. Kayihura looked around and asked; “Who was investigating the Budo fire?” No one raised a hand then suddenly he pointed at Kampala Metropolitan Criminal Investigations Director Paul Kato.
“Yes, Kato is here. You were the one investigating the Budo fire. What is the status of the Budo investigations?” Gen. Kayihura asked.

The response from Mr Kato, a former head of homicide, left no doubt that the police’s investigations department is a forgotten docket. “Sir, when I left CID headquarters I left the file with Mr Hillary Odoch,” he said. Mr Odoch has since left for the United Nations Peacekeeping Mission. Seeing no better answers from his detectives, Gen. Kayihura halted the search for details but he openly conceded.

No lie
“Nobody should tell you a lie that we have established the cause of Budo fire.”
Three years since the inferno that still haunts many parents, the police file on the cause is probably under a thick blanket of dust or could have been used to light a charcoal stove at a certain police officer’s home.

It also brings to bare what lies within the CID operations and why some very high profile crime cases have gone cold over the years. According to crime statistics from the 2011 police report, 99,676 cases out of the total 262,936 were criminal in nature requiring investigations while 163,260 required civil and mediation remedies.

Gen. Kayihura is aware of the malaise of his CID department, including having the most corrupt officers and rightly described it as “the sick man of police”. More than 70 per cent (183,055) of the reported cases during the year were still pending investigations and even though several police departments have been re-shuffled not once, the CID has remained on a deathbed.

Gen. Kayihura’s deputy Julius Odwe presented some answers while appearing at a commission of inquiry on the fire that gutted Kasubi Tombs.Mr Odwe said the government has been interfering in the work of the CID which has hindered the independence of the directorate.

“The director of CID (in this case Edward Ochom) is not left to do his work. In many instances, the activities of CID are not coordinated, leading to a failure of investigations,” he said at the time.
The answer also lies in the recent evolution of the CID and political climatic in which they operate.
Indeed, the filthy in CID has been long standing. The Ssebutinde Commission in 1999 revealed details of how detectives were engaged in crimes they were employed to prevent.

Two very senior surviving officers Edward Ochom and Moses Sakira were both alleged to have committed serious offences that damaged their integrity and that of the Police in general. The Sebutinde Commission accused the duo of usurping the powers of the Director of Public Prosecutions, and forging and altering of documents. The same officers were later appointed to head the CID, with Ochom as Director and Sakira as his deputy even though the later is currently under suspension.

The commission’s findings blew the CID house into total chaos and made severe recommendations that marked a turning point for the department. The powers that the CID director used to wield were slashed. His decisions were subjected to evaluation by other powers unfortunately most times by politicians rather than officers higher up within the police institution.

On January 12, 2006, the nudity of the CID director was exposed in a case involving Rtd. Col. Dr Kizza Besigye, the Forum for Democratic Change party president, in which he was accused of raping his house maid, Ms Joanita Kyakuwa.

The Director of CID at the time, Ms Elizabeth Kuteesa, was a state witness. She told the presiding judge, Justice J.B. Katutsi, that she received orders from President Museveni through the then IGP Katumba Wamala to investigate the case. But court later found out that Ms Kutesa falsified the police registry and the rape case was dismissed.

The case was closely followed by yet another one that linked Dr Besigye to People’s Redemption Army (PRA) rebels that court, too, found to be unsubstantiated and that state witnesses lied under oath.
After a string of such scandals, the CID has never picked up. In fact, even those who are supposed to defend its legacy tell Saturday Monitor that the directorate is sinking despite changes in its management.

CID directors, who replaced Ms Kuteesa from Mr Martin Okoth Ochola and his deputy Moses Balimoyo to Mr Ochom and Mr Sakira, have seen their powers tamed, a police source says. Mr Sakira is now out of CID after he allegedly mismanaged Dr Besigye’s case concerning his allegations that the government leased Lake Kyoga to South African investors.
Gen. Kayihura says CID is a shadow of itself, which is full of old guards who cannot do field work anymore.

“When I came in, the traffic department was the sick man of the Force. But for CID, even when I try to clean it there is still some Lucifer just like they are in heaven,” he told Arua residents recently. He says many investigations are either slowed down or not properly handled, failing the dispensation of justice. The CID department’s integrity has fallen to the extent that its detectives are not any better than Special Police Constables (using Primary Seven leavers) in the Rapid Response Unit in effectiveness.

President’s sentiments
The President too has expressed the same sentiments on whether the CID is sinking and if so, why it is going under. Lately though, plans have been underway to create a new unit to act as a stop-gap measure for the foregoing problems.

In reality, the new unit has already started on its work because it handles most of the serious cases from the terrorist attack investigations to car robberies or ransoms. But CID detectives, speaking on condition of anonymity to protect their positions, say the problem is down to neglect by the police top managers.

“We have shortage of logistics, financial and human resources yet there is nothing very costly in our operations as is investigations,” a source says. CID has only 4,428 investigators of the 38,000 plus strength of the Force yet it needs double that number to effectively deal with crime. The ration numbers mean that there would be an investigator per 22 cases irrespective of the post of the investigator.

“This is unrealistic. No detective can adequately handle more than a case file a month,” a senior detective says. It is this pressure, the source says, that has brought down the system of specialised units in the directorate. Files, regardless of the crime, are allocated to officers depending on the workload each unit has.

For instance, investigating a murder case requires atleast Shs5m, which means if the CID investigated all the 2,753 murder cases that happened in 2009, it would have spent Shs13.8 billion, the source says.

No logistics
Monitoring and supervision of junior detectives by their superiors, the source says, are also difficult since the regional and district CID officers do not have logistics as is the case with their colleagues in operations.

The Director of Public Prosecutions, Mr Richard Buteera, too sees loopholes in the CID operations.
A paper Mr Buteera presented to the Police Council, highlights police inadequacies in managing of exhibits, arresting of suspects, record keeping and exposing of suspects.

“Exhibits recovered in the course of a criminal investigation should be entered in the exhibits register and exhibits slip book,” Mr Buteera said. “It would be difficult to extract one panga from a heap of 50 if it isn’t labelled. There are situations when crucial exhibits are recovered by officers who abandon them without exhibiting or labelling them. This may create a missing link with the evidence thus effectively working against the prosecution case,” he added.

He said many investigating officers due to “mediocre performance” abandon reports of key expert witnesses which result in gaps, if not addressed, have a potential to destroy “an otherwise good prosecution case”.

But Gen. Kayihura attributes it to laziness. To cure the problem, Gen. Kayihura has introduced a Case Backlog and Investigation Monitoring Secretariat under his office to regularly monitor the progress of all cases reported for investigation.

Status reports
In addition, CID commanders will, with effect from this month, be giving regular status reports and updates to complainants on the progress of their cases, he said. Investigating officers will also have to provide written explanations, to the respective complainants, DPP and IGP, for all cases lost or discharged in court.

But given the high frequency of transfers of investigators, like the transfer of Budo Junior inferno investigators may also hinder monitoring and successful investigation.

Some of the unresolved crimes

• On April 14, 2008, a fire gutted Nassolo dormitory at Budo Junior School, killing 20 school girls. Up to now, they have never arrested any suspect related to the torching of the dormitory. Unending school fires that spread countrywide gave security intelligences a hard time as they would only find ashes from school to school.
• On the evening of March 16, 2010, a catastrophic fire broke out at the Kasubi Tombs about 5km from the city centre. The fire engulfed and completely burnt down the Muzibu Azaala Mpanga tomb. Most of the priceless relics were destroyed in the fire. Neither a suspect nor a cause of the fire has ever been known.
• In February 2009, fire gutted Owino Market, one of Kampala’s largest outdoor markets. Police have never known the cause of that fire despite arresting a few suspects in connection with its torching. Many victims accused the bus company that wants to build the terminal of arson but those claims have never been proved.
• Iron bar gangs in the Metropolitan area that have continued to kill people but investigators have never gone to the bottom of the actual people masterminding them.
• The suspected ritual murder of 12-year-old Joseph Kasirye in Masaka District. The High Court in Masaka cleared Godfrey Kato-Kajubi of murder and freed him. Kajubi, a well-known city tycoon, had been on trial for the suspected sacrifice of Kasirye, who was murdered on October 27, 2008 at Kayugi village, Mukungwe sub-county in Masaka District. The State ha since appealed against the verdict.
• On July 11, 2005, Robinah Kiyingi, a lawyer who was shot dead at her home allegedly by her Australian-based cardiologist husband Aggrey Kiyingi . A key witness, Lt. Caesar Enya, in the case was shot dead in Kampala. Lt. Enya was in charge of a special investigations branch that had investigated allegations that Kiyingi had paid money to two government soldiers to kill his wife in 2003. The case was dismissed in the High Court.
• The Financial Manager and Team Leader of Send-a-Cow, a non-governmental organisation, Samwiri Naswaala, was shot dead by unknown assailants at his residence in Kira Township in Wakiso District.
• Tom Julunga, a Forum for Democratic Change activist, was shot dead by unknown people in 2009. The investigation to apprehend the suspects and the reason why he was shot ended as soon as he was buried.
• Investigations into the procurements in the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in 2007. Some cases were forwarded to the police but 90 per cent of them have never been completed.

Compiled by Andrew Bagala