Work to improve Uganda's civil Police relations

The recent images of Police officers whipping supporters of Dr. Besigye who had just been released from prison were very unfortunate and regrettable and a dent to the public-Police relations.

There has been deservedly a lot of condemnation for the actions of the men in uniform and as I wrote this piece, the officers who had participated and commanded these criminal acts had been tried and transferred to various stations as punishment for their actions. Whether the punishments handed to these officers were sufficient enough remains a debate for another day. In the same regard there have been calls from human rights activities as well as the general public for the resignation and sacking of the Inspector General of Police (IGP) for his failure to reign on his errant officers.

  The dismissal of the IGP is not an answer to the problem because incidents like this are not common to Uganda alone but prevalent in many young democracies where would be guardians of civil liberties turn out to be the tormentors of those they are supposed to protect by law. 

However, in all the condemnation and misgivings of our Police force, there has been little or no solution proposed to improve the relations and conduct between the Police and the public. Reconstructing the civil-Police relations ought to be the major focus  in restoring the trust and faith of the public and perhaps the establishment of a  directorate of civil police relations with the duty to provide compulsory training  to both low and high ranking police officers in civil police  relations.    

The Police should employ expertise from both the Police and the public to help build understanding and relationships between the Police and the public with the task to sustain its image and trust through episodes like the one mentioned above that often happen in the course of policing.

Building trust between the Police and the public is critical for the health of a growing Ugandan democracy since the actions of the Police are in a larger microscope in this era of information technology. Focusing on combat alone is not a sufficient method of building a credible Police force.

A civilian perspective ought to be applied in all the Police-people relations training and made it categorically clear to the officers that citizenship takes precedence over profession and, therefore, those privileged enough to put on the uniform owe a duty of protecting all civil liberties no matter where their allegiances lie and the institution of the Police should never be seen as a tool of coercion.

The Police also needs to revamp its recruitment policy of only focusing on qualification rather than character and love of country as a prerequisite for enrolment into the force. The challenges the Police face today cannot be solved overnight, a lot of both political and public will is required to improve the relations between the force and the general public. Respect cannot be earned through rhetoric but rather through action.

Ugandans should be able to evaluate the performance and achievements of the police force not only in bad times but also in good times.  In this regard, therefore, it will only take shared efforts of all Ugandans and not finger pointing or sackings in order to realise an effective Police force with a clear understanding of civil Police relations and with a duty to serve and protect all civil liberties.

The writer works with the High Commission of the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago