The Uganda Police force has launched a mobile application that will provide users with details about the Force as well as information about lost and found property, Police stations near them with respective contacts of officers, as well as the Police leadership structure.
The force says this is part of the process to implement their information management system. The system includes among others; motor vehicle registration database, driver’s licence database, licence to carry firearms database, criminal database and traffic accident database.
Others are; missing persons’ database, drivers licence database, ex convict database as well as the finger print database.
“The Uganda Police Force has a constitutional mandate of protecting life and property…….recently, we have realized that due to very many reasons, the rate at which police is protecting this right, leave alone recover the property and bring perpetrators to justice is reducing. This could be explained by many factors which include, advanced technology that is unmatched with police innovation..,” a statement from police reads in part.
“As a result, quite often than not, many police stations are littered with many unclaimed properties or the owners cannot adduce enough evidence to prove that the property belongs to them. In many other instances, the public never get to know that their property is even in the hands of the police. Some times this property is auctioned by order of courts or if returned, it is never in its original form,” the statement continues.
Once a person loses anything or a person goes missing, the concerned parties are expected to report to the nearest police station. An officer will immediately update the application to indicate the details of the missing document, property or missing person.
The database has a GPS locater that will help indicate the Police station where the property or missing person was reported. The app will carry information asking any person with information on the missing persons, properties or documents to report to the nearest police station or share information leading to recovery.
Once the missing property or person is recovered, police will update the application notifying the public where the person or property is. Police is supposed to develop and launch more than 26 data base applications as part of the Police Information Management System project started in 2006.