ICT in Uganda Police

Will Police’s Computerized System Survive?


The Uganda police force received a computerized crime data machine worth over Shs 200 million from the US government.

This comes at a time when Uganda is witnessing a surging increase in crime rates, coupled with a heavy backlog of cases to cases under police investigation.

Mr Rile, the Usaid chief of party, said the programme, funded by the Millennium Challenge Corporation through United States Agency for International Development (Usaid), will introduce CID officers to the basics in computer operations that will help officers acquire skills to fight fraud and store data on crime.

A countrywide training of criminal investigation officers’ in basic computer skills has been outlined.

The Internal Affairs Ministry and Faculty of Computing, Makerere University has already signed a memorandum of understanding, for the faculty to train police officers how to use computers in crime information gathering and maintenance.
Hajj Moses Balimwoyo, the deputy director CID said the Usaid had done a great job by boosting the capacity of the Police in specialised recovery, preservation, presentation and evaluation of computer-based evidence. He added that most Police officers don’t know how to turn on a computer.

The digital era seem to elude the police, like other government departments.

Last year, towards the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting, over 42 CCTV cameras worth 6 million u.s dollars were installed in strategic areas in Kampala city and along the 40 km road to Entebbe international airport.

However, up to today, no suspect has been produced in court and charged basing on evidence gathered from these CCTV cameras. Some areas where these cameras are standing usually have the frequent traffic jam, like the roundabout on Kampala road at Equatorial Hotel.

Other police equipments like the speed-meter gadgets that were given to the traffic police have since left the roads, and so has the search for speed governors.
According to this year’s police crime report, there was an increase on the death toll on our roads, to 2,334, the majority being pedestrians. These were caused by reckless driving, speeding and equally reckless pedestrians and motorcyclists.
Other police acquisitions like the breathalyzers that have been introduced in the past have disappeared off the streets after a short period.
At one time, the traffic police was vigilant about seat belts, crash helmets and talking on phone while driving, but the vigilance has since depreciated.
In March this year, Motorola Inc. operationalised its TETRA digital trunk radio communications system in Uganda. The state-of-the-art control rooms based in Kampala and Entebbe enable efficient communication between the police and other security agencies.
Wireless communication is an essential tool for the Uganda police during heightened alert, as it enables more efficient deployment of resources and a quicker and more effective response to incidents, says Ron Landenberg, director of communications system operation, part of Motorola’s Government and Public Safety Business Unit.
Causes of the depreciating vigilance of police in all these operations seem to have a similar lining.
They range from lack of expert-trained personnel; Uganda has 2,800 detectives, one ballistics expert and three hand writing experts.
There is also shortage of maintenance costs which leads to depreciation and final breakdown of the equipments, facilitation for the officers which exposes them to bribery, and lack of support equipments like hand gloves, recording equipments and evidence gloves.
In February this year, police in Nakasongola hired a witchdoctor, one Nzoyizoyi at a cost of Uganda shs 200,000, to help them recover a stolen motorcycle. Though his attempts also failed.
The pomp will resurface when a disastrous accident occurs.
The slow speed at which data is availed in the country has been blamed on the manual working of most systems in the country, especially government departments. Examples include the computerization of the land tittles registry office and the laptops to judicial officers.
It was recently reported that police has accumulated a backlog of 400,000 cases in the last seven years. And as the old saying goes, justice delayed is justice denied.
Disappearance of case files from police custody is an equally familiar event.
But as critics have already pointed out, this system is equally bound to fall. First there is shortage of computers in many of our police stations. Some district police stations have no computers in the office, while other stations have no electricity supply at all, therefore the system will have no effect on their services.
The system works with internet. It’s realized that the internet coverage of the country is still in infantry. The police force’s officers will therefore be affected, because due to budget funding, they can’t maintain a continuous internet connection.
Where the few computers exist, it will be a task to continuously update the files, with information.
Although the use of computers is today’s fashion, there is need for trained personnel combined with access to appropriate hardware and software, to be able to utilize the computer.