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Flying Squad indicates that some criminals hired guns from police personnel
Kampala, Uganda | THE INDEPENDENT | A report compiled by the Flying Squad has revealed that 23 guns belonging to police and military were recovered from thugs last year.
The report compiled by Flying Squad commander Godwin Turamye, which URN has seen shows, ten out of 23 guns belonged to police, while others had markings of military, prison and security agencies of neighbouring countries.
Turamye has already shared the report with Criminal Investigations Director Grace Akullo, who will share it with top police management.
In the report, Flying Squad indicates that some criminals hired guns from police personnel while in some other instances, security personnel were waylaid and their guns were taken. The criminals have used the guns to terrorize several Ugandans particularly mobile money operators and business persons.
The findings by the Flying Squad will be discussed in the force’s Police Advisory Committee purposely to devise a mechanism of reducing gaps explored by criminals to access guns attached to police personnel.
“We have incidents where police personnel rub shoulders with criminals to the extent of hiring out guns for as low as 100,000 shillings. We have cases where policemen sold a gun to poachers at 2 million shillings,” a police source said.
A few months ago, the CID team commanded by the then head of general crimes desk, Francis Olugu arrested two police officers attached to Jinja road police station for selling a firearm to thugs at 2 Million Shillings.
Police identified the police personnel as Corporal Richard Iramo and Police Constable Andrew Opio. Police noted that the gun had been used in various motor vehicle robberies where some car owners were left nursing wounds.
Olugu discovered that guns had been sold to criminals when he was dispatched to Murchison National Park to hunt for poachers. Police noticed that the poachers had been using police and military guns. Seven guns were recovered of which three belonged to army and three others to the police.
In December 2020, Flying Squad in Bugiri recovered Riffle no UG POL 565823246 34729 with 28 rounds of ammunition in Kapyanga sub-county, Kagali village. Police said the gun was stolen from a police constable Richard Omara.
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