The Uganda Community Policing Department at Uganda Police force (UPF) has adopted the Local Council System as one of the ways to fight crime in Uganda.
ACP Anatoli Muleterwa the Head of Community Policing Department said that he and SP Cyprian Okino have been engaging local leaders on their cardinal roles and responsibilities during an upcountry tour.
Muleterwa says that in a bid to solve social harmony in the community, strengthen working relationship and build a strong partnership between the public and the police needed to adopt the local council system in order to prevent crime.
“We have realized that the local council leaders have a lot of power for which we would like to tap into, they are mandated by the Local Council Act to resolve incidents of disharmony, issues related to misunderstanding between members of the community, communication and coordination among them and ensuring that there’s an improved relationship,” he said
Muleterwa added that coming on the ground was one of the ways of empowering the LC’s to recognize that they had the power to cause this social harmony in the community
According to Muleterwa, LC system should also be empowered to handle among other cases such as; feud, common assault and debts
“Once we let some of these cases grow, they aggravate into criminal cases leading to assault, murder and malicious damage,” Muleterwa noted
Adding that in so doing, the police will be curtailing the level of complaints that come to them because the community would have realized where the powers of LC which would strength our work relationship with the community and ensure that the police concentrates on the key role of crime prevention other than being “Problem Solvers.”
Meetings were held in Soroti, Kumi, Serere and Ngoora district under the theme, LC system for crime prevention.
He therefore encouraged total respect for the LC system by the community policing team.
“Have total respect in as far as LCs are concerned, be humble and be good listeners to the LCs and community in general, this will help improve our working relationship with the community,” he said urging local leaders to be preventive other than reactive
“Identify the problems that affect the community than waiting for them be service oriented that is professional and disciplined,”ACP Muleterwa added.
