Normally, the ethical work of thousands of police officers is easily undone by the actions of one unethical officer and the indictment of one officer seems like an indictment of all hence, integrity dictates the level of community trust.
As the institution is striving to preserve a positive and ethical image amongst all departments to the public they are sworn to serve and protect, Deputy IGP. Brigadier Sabiiti Muzeeyi has cautioned officers in Kampala Metropolitan Police (KMP) on aspects of working professionally and respectfully.
“Building and maintaining trust is the hallmark of successful policing. It takes a great deal of continuous effort,” Brigadier Sabiiti said. While speaking to the various heads of departments in Kampala Metropolitan Police, Sabiiti called upon the officers to command visible authority within their communities, maintain a high standard of honesty, integrity, equity, professionalism, building and sustaining a trusting working relationship between the public and the police.
Meanwhile, CP Frank Mwesigwa who held a security assessment meeting in Matugga a few days ago assured residents of police cooperation to reduce the crime rate in their areas. He urged the people to work closely with area commanders for easy information sharing, increase vigilance in identifying and monitoring criminals.
Security concerns raised include poor response to emergency calls, solicitation of arresting fees by officers, offering of money to secure police bond, offering bond to suspects minus informing the complaints, failure to update complainants on case file progress and intermeddling into investigations by crime preventers hence sabotaging justice among others.
Mwesigwa said police has already started a system cleanup to deal with rogue police officers. He reassured the residents that he would look into the behavior of some individual officers whose policing capabilities were questionable. He assured the residents of police plans to secure toll free lines for every division to help ease the flow of information between the residents and police. Mwesigwa reminded police officers that the focal point of focus should be attending to public security concerns with the uttermost sense of professionalism and integrity.
