Police Beef Up Crime Preventers’ Security After ‘Demands’ to Denounce Kayihura

Police have tightened the security provided to members of commanding organ of the National Crime Preventers Forum after anonymous people issued threats on their lives.

Last week, the National Crime Preventers’ coordinator, Blaise Kamugisha came out with allegations that he and the other leaders of NCPF were being threatened to denounce Police chief, Gen Kale Kayihura.

Kamugisha told SoftPower News days ago that written notices had been dropped at several residences of people in the command structure with ultimatums to denounce Kayihura.

“As leaders of the crime preventers, we have given you only 14 days to disown Kale Kayihura as your patron and as an IGP publicly; failure to do that, you shall face our wrath and consequences. Stand warned!” one of the placards read.

The Deputy National Coordinator of Crime Preventers, Brian Mauso, is quoted by some media outlets to have said that the threatening leaflets were thrown at homes of seven leaders of NCPF who reside in areas of Sonde, Mukono and Nansana.

It is at the backdrop of these threats that Kampala Metropolitan Police Commander, Frank Mwesigwa has ordered that Police provides full time security to the leaders of the Crime Preventers Forum who are being threatened.

In an address to all area commanders, Frank Mwesigwa ordered for an immediate provision of security to the said leaders, according to a statement released Wednesday by Kampala Metropolitan Police.

‘’We shall keep guarding their homes and movements so that they don’t encounter any serious attacks from wrong elements of the public,” Mwesigwa said.

Questions have however arisen on the circumstances surrounding the said threats, why they were issued, who could be behind them and the timing.

Police refers to the threats as “a hate campaign” whose seeds were planted as early as 2013, “following the group’s [crime preventers] unwavered loyalty towards police administration and commitment to sharing information which has led to mass reduction in crime”.

However, the timing of the said threats at a time when the credibility of Police and Gen Kayihura are at test remains suspicious. The leaflets allegedly dropped at the homes of the leaders are akin to those used in 2015 and 2017 in parts of Greater Masaka targeting specific persons civilians.

Some believe that the notices of threats could have been planted by the Crime Preventers to further project the IGP as the victim.

It is also coincidentally strange that the Police crime preventers who have been bashed even more viciously by the public in previous years for their allegedly aiding crime, come to be threatened at this time to denounce Kayihura.