The Inspector General of Police, Martins Okoth Ochola, has launched the 2022 Annual Crime Report indicating an 18% increase in the number of crimes reported to Police from 196,081 cases reported in 2021 to 231,653 in 2022.
This was mainly attributed to the full opening of the economy after the Covid-19 lockdown and growing confidence to report the crime to the Police.
AIGP Tom Magambo, the Head of the Criminal Investigations Directorate (CID), revealed that out of the 28 Policing Regions in Uganda, North Kyoga registered the highest number of cases with 17,605, followed by KMP North with 16,691 cases, KMP South with 14,492 cases, Rwizi with 14,204 cases and Albertine with 13,544 cases.
He added that out of the 183 Police Divisions/Central Police Stations in Uganda, Old Kampala registered the highest number of cases with 4,314, followed by Katwe Police Division with 3,938 cases, Luwero CPS with 3,902, Kamuli CPS with 3,268 cases & Kiryandongo Police Station with 3,179.
Out of the total cases reported to Police in 2022, 68,405 cases were taken to Court, 26,749 cases were not proceeded with, and 136,499 cases were still under inquiry.
However, Ochola revealed there was an improvement compared to 2021 where 65,008 cases were taken to Court, 60,095 cases were not proceeded with and 70,978 cases were under inquiries. He noted that improvement in cases taken to Court was by 5.2%.
In a related development, there was a 35% increase in common traffic offences registered by the Directorate of Traffic and Road Safety countrywide from 336,722 cases in 2021 to 456,993 cases in 2022.
As a result, the number of road traffic crashes increased by 16.9% from 17,443 in 2021 to 20,394 in 2022 where 3,901 crashes were fatal, 10,776 were serious and 5,717 were minor by nature.
In the period under review, Ochola noted that the focus has been on improving the quality of services offered to the public in terms of enhanced law and order, engagement of communities through community policing programmes, capacity building, and developing the initial phase of digitalising our processes for purposes of easing detection, reporting, tracking, supervision and analysis of crime trends.
