Police has started its crackdown on errant private security companies in line with a promise made to Makerere University students by the Inspector General of Police this week.
The police boss, Kale Kayihura, promised that all private security companies would be disarmed. He said the police would also step up the inspection of the recruitment, training and operations of the companies.
Now two private companies, Detail Security and Snow White Guards, have lost their guns.
On Tuesday this week a guard employed by Snow White was involved in a shooting at a Makerere University hostel in which two students were killed and one was seriously wounded.
Both Detail Security and Snow White Guards were owned by the late Joseph Behakanira. Behakanira was better known as the owner of Avemar Shopping Arcade in downtown Kampala and J&M Airport Road Hotel in Bwebajja.
Okello Makmot, the police commissioner for Private Security and Firearms Control, says the disarming is in line with a memorandum the Association of Private Security Organizations signed with government. He says the memorandum provides for the disarming of any companies found to have misused firearms licensed to them for their work.
Since the beginning of this year there have been three different cases of fatal shootings involving private security guards.
On March 8, 2010 a guard at Kitezi KCC dumping site shot and killed a truck driver. Two days later another guard shot dead a bodaboda rider in Kisaasi along the Northern by-pass.
Okello Makmot says private security guards are not supposed to use lethal weapons to kill civilians. He says that when faced with a mortal threat, they are supposed to disable suspected criminals, but not kill them.
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The police commissioner says his own investigations of the killings has shown that in most events the guards are not able to control their tempers and so they use unnecessary force to communicate their frustrations. He wants to design a course on tolerance which can be incorporated in the private security training curriculum.
