Police Commanders warned against giving former crime preventers uniforms, deploying them
The police leadership has warned police commanders against issuing out uniforms to former crime preventers and using them in operations.
Early this year, President Museveni ordered for the transfer of crime preventers from police to the Uganda People’s Defence Forces (UPDF).
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Police would later ask those with government stores that had been given to them under the previous leadership of Gen.Kale Kayihura to return them.
However, in a message to all Regional Police Commanders, Divisional/District Police Commanders and all units, the police director in charge of operations, AIGP Asuman Mugyenyi has reminded commanders that the group is no longer working with the police force but placed under Uganda People’s Defence Forces to constitute part of the reserve force.
“It has however been noted that some unit commanders are still deploying them to perform official police duties on a regular basis and others have gone ahead to issue them with police uniforms,” AIGP Mugyenyi says in a message dated September 24.
According to the message, all Regional Police Commanders are instructed to check all their areas of responsibility and ensure that practice stops with immediate effect.
“Any commander who goes ahead to disobey this directive must have disciplinary action against him or her,” adds the message.
Speaking at a function at Lugogo in March, Museveni said the 12 million crime preventers would now be placed under the army and would help in case of any external aggression they would come in handy to assist the UPDF.
“If anybody was to provoke a war with Uganda, I would just mobilise any number I want and we sort out that stupid person,” he said.
From a group of patriotic students from Makerere University, the National Crime Preventers Forum was formed in 2014 to help police in detection and prevention of crime in their areas countrywide.
In the run up to the 2016 general elections, police recruited more crime preventers bringing the number to over eleven million countrywide but critics have on many occasions claimed that these are a group of militias.
Many have since seen the group as a Kayihura project but Museveni cleared the air about the notion saying they are not a creation of the former IGP.
“A few weeks ago I read in the papers that fate of crime preventers was to be decided by the new IGP.I called him and told him this(crime preventers) was not his problem,”Museveni said.
“Anybody who had an idea that it (crime preventers) was a Kayihura project was wrong.”
