Kayihuras community policing: reality or rhetoric?

Nov 06, 2014

I was one of the first people to congratulate Gen Kayihura on the inception of Community Policing (CP). At the time I also made it clear the applause of his vision would be followed by evaluation.

By Rene M Ndyomugyenyi

I was one of the first people to congratulate Gen Kayihura on the inception of Community Policing (CP). At the time I also made it clear the applause of his vision would be followed by evaluation.


Evaluation based on crime rates, fear of crime, citizens' perceptions, and other quantitative outcomes. As we may have gathered by now, CP is a partnership-like relationship between the Police and the community where by the Police are no longer the alpha and omega of criminal law, but allies of the communities in solving problems.


In my evaluation I understand that in most communities it will take time to cut through the walls of mistrust and contempt of Police before the partnership can be effective. I also understand that this process requires patience, determination and creative confidence building. Confidence building leads to trust, without trust there is no community policing because the Police then will not be able to get close to the people to forge a relationship. So let's look at the three aspects of trust building that we are currently not seeing in practice.

So far I think the Police is not doing well on that front, they are still very reactional and still conducting themselves in an authoritarian way. And I am not talking about responses and reactions to incidents of public disorder, but simple day to day policing and responses to regular personal crime.


Building trust is the responsibility of individual officers, their conduct and attitudes whether or not in professional interaction with the public is key to the whole. But this also depends on how much emphasis is coming from the top leadership, in terms of support and education rendered to front-line officers.


My findings of interaction with about 30 front-line officers, suggest that only 3 out of the whole understood (basically) the concept of CP which is very disappointing, they have not received specialised training, they have no implementation guide etc. One was frank to say 'we only hear about CP on TV'.  Without proper orientation of the hearts and minds, means that the major operational components of CP are being missed. This explains why there is still little or no police visibility in communities. CP means that officers are out of the stations and are patrolling their respective neighborhoods thus reducing fear within the community. Fear of crime curtails communal enjoyment and diminishes confidence; it means that people prefer to stay indoors at certain times because the streets are not safe without the police nearby. Presently it is 'after incident' response which is in itself is completely unreliable due to the response times. Instead we are still seeing randomised patrols that use a 'dragnet' to apprehend everyone found loitering in the neighborhood without a good reason or no ID, these people are then processed and sentenced. Such blind and uncreative 'problem solving' actions are contrary to CP and simply increase the gap between police and community either from a bystanders view or from the family and relation view of those arrested.

Including stakeholders.

CP is practical democracy, therefore it requires working inclusion of Parliament, business leaders, churches, schools etc. basically anyone who feels for their neighborhood. This inclusion is still lacking, there is little knowledge and information in the community about CP neither is there high profile /political leadership credulence voice lent to it in terms of MPs, Local Government etc.


Through the inclusion of these players, the police leadership will convince the public thereof that they are genuinely interested in their communities and that they should be viewed as part of it. There must be a platform, if possible a fully-fledged and funded component tasked with communicating with all members of the community, to listen to their opinions and be seen to stand together in promoting CP.


This will help diminish the 'us against them' attitude and further dilute the firm belief of the police as 'those who come to arrest you' instead have it replaced with 'those who are there to help you'.


Change in operational structure and management norms.


CP requires major shift from the traditional operational procedures to more tailor suited ones, there is need to re-evaluate the shift rotation and transfer policies. In order for officers to build strong and lasting relations with the community, there must be a degree of permanency in their particular deployment.

This is not happening at the moment because we are still seeing frequent transfers which means the community does not bond and are subjected to a complete different mode of work of the new officers. This further means that creative problem solving skills of the outgoing officer are wasted and cannot be adopted by the incoming staff.

Officers at a lower-rank since are in contact most with the communities, must be further involved in the operational decision making processes, unquestionable orders as is today must be reduced instead participatory management and innovative thinking promoted.

Finally the role of crime investigation or detective should be shared with the patrol officers. Essence of CP partly is to reduce the desk work, therefore if patrol officers are given investigative training and support, it means that they can compile reports in the field and let the regular CID concentrate on bigger cases.

I am sure Gen Kayihura has his strategies laid out somewhere, and my applauds for him still stand, as there is no doubt that CP is the best way to go, however there is  need to see the above 3 basic ingredients of the same in action. In my next evaluation I will be looking at the importance of establishing an independent, civilian led complaints commission to work alongside the PSU.

    The writer is the executive director of Corruption and Risk Advisory Bureau, Kampala

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