Police reorganising community policing directorate

Kampala, Uganda | THE INDEPENDENT | The police leadership has started reorganizing the Directorate of Community Policing in line with the police standing orders. The reorganization exercise that kicked off last week includes reorganizing the structures and human resource as well as establishing Community Liaison offices where they don’t exist.

According to the Police Structures and Standing Orders, District and Divisional Liaison officer is required to be at the rank of Assistant Superintendent of Police (ASP), which is lower that of the District or Divisional Police Commander. The Regional Liaison Officer is required to be at the rank of Superintendent of Police, two ranks below that of the Regional Police Commander (RPC).

Asan Kasingye, the Police Chief Political Commissar, who is also in charge of the Community Policing, says the structures for Community Liaisons officers have been ignored for very many years. He explains that several officers have retired ad have never been replaced. “The CLOS are senior officers. They are the same level with traffic, CID, Intelligence and other departments. We are not actually bringing them in that is what used to happen before but I don’t what happened,” he said.

The officers, who area now being appointed to the positions because of their rank, will undergo training on Community Policing and also receive hands on induction from experienced officers, some of whom have been holding the department for several years.

In the past years, the police leadership would appoint personnel to the position of Community Liaison Officer in disregard of their ranks contrary to the police standing orders.

Some of the Community Liaison Officers are at the rank of Corporal and have had minimal impact due to their inability to influence the Officers in charge Operations, Traffic, Crime Intelligence and even the station due to their seniority in rank.

“The Problem is you can’t have a junior officer being a District Community Liaison Officer that work is for gazetted officers. They could have tried to do what the other officers are doing but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t appoint officers with the rank to the offices,” Kasingye said.

According to Kasingye, although they haven’t received any complaints about the performance of the Community Liaison Officers, it is hard to tell whether they have been giving advice to officers above their rank.

While the former Inspector General of Police, Gen. Kale Kayihura focused his community Policing strategy on Crime Preventers, his predecessor, Martin Okoth Ochola is focusing on community policing through police officers and stations.

The officers have since been advised to create am enabling environment for the public to easily interact with them and trust them.

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