KAMPALA. The installation of closed-circuit television (CCTV) camera infrastructure was among the key strategic interventions Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni issued in late 2018, in response to rising crime and insecurity in the country.
The CCTV infrastructure project followed a series of gun attacks around the country, including the assassination of Joan Kagezi, a senior public prosecutor, that of deputy police boss Andrew Felix Kaweesi, and Arua Municipality Member of Parliament, Colonel Ibrahim Abiriga, among others.
In May 2018, the Ugandan Parliament passed a Shs60b supplementary budget to establish the first phase of the CCTV camera project. Abiriga’s killing put so much pressure on the government to complete the project that it borrowed from commercial banks to raise Shs400b to expand the project.
President Museveni launched the first phase of the CCTV camera project at Nateete Police Station and he said the new technology would wipe out criminality, especially in urban areas. “The game is finished,” he said. “It’s finished for the criminals.”
Since then, over 8,000 CCTV cameras have so far been installed around the country, but have the cameras finished criminality in the country? Our investigation paints a mixed picture.
The most recent police crime report released in 2021 shows that the crime rate fell from 612 incidents per 100,000 people in 2018 when the CCTV project was set up, to 550 incidents two years later. Given the movement restrictions as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, this drop cannot be definitively attributed to the CCTV project.
In fact, in 2021, criminal cases increased marginally from the 195,931 cases registered in 2020.
Detection
While it is hard to measure how many would-be criminals were deterred by the CCTV camera projects, a better assessment is of the cases solved and criminals detected by them. Of the 196,081 criminal cases reported in 2021, only 3,188 incidents, or just 1.6 percent of the total, were registered after they were detected by police CCTV cameras.
The Police ICT Directorate considers this a good achievement given that in 2019 only 73 cases were registered after being captured by CCTV cameras. The Director of Police ICT, Senior Commissioner of Police Yusuf Ssewanyana defends the CCTV camera project saying it is helping in the fight against crime.
“In 2021, the CCTV cameras played a major role in aiding police to fight crime during the lockdown season. At least 1,640 suspects were arrested using footage from the CCTV systems while 1,206 requests were handled to support investigations,” SCP Ssewanyana’s report on the project notes in part.
Yet being captured on camera does not necessarily lead to criminals being taken off the streets. Only 755 crime incidents reported after using the CCTV cameras ended up in court in 2021, according to police statistics. This means only one out of every 100 cases prosecuted in court in 2021 relied on evidence from the CCTV project.
Another area that the police expected to use the CCTV project for deterrence and detection was in the theft of motor vehicles and motorcycles. Rather than reduce, however, these thefts increased in 2021 compared to 2020 despite major roads having CCTV cameras.
In 2021, 4,308 motorcycles were reported stolen, 801 more than the year before. The number of cars stolen over the same period increased from 880 to 942. The total number of cars and motorcycles stolen in 2021, 5,250, was lower than the 5,701 stolen in 2017 before the installation of the CCTV cameras. But movement restrictions in 2021 due to the coronavirus pandemic meant there were far fewer cars on the roads, or able to be driven away past roadblocks.
If the CCTV cameras did not prevent thefts, they did not significantly aid recoveries, either. Of the 5,250 vehicles, including motorcycles, reported stolen in 2021, 4,014 had not been recovered by the time the police crime report was published.
In addition, fatalities due to road accidents have continued to shoot up despite the presence of CCTV cameras on highways. In 2021, over 4,159 people were killed in accidents on Ugandan roads, which was 13.5 percent higher than in 2020. Reckless drivers, speeding and mechanically unsound vehicles contributed most to these accidents.
Capital offences dropped significantly during the period of the crime report review. The number of homicides dropped from 4,500 in 2018 to 3,900 in 2021. Robberies fell to 5,200 from 7,300 but it is not clear whether this was due to the CCTV project or the pandemic restrictions, which included a dusk-to-dawn curfew.
No magic bullet
A much-publicised case of the carjacking and murder of Maria Nagirinya and her driver Ronald Kitayimbwa on August 28, 2019, provided an insight into the challenges the CCTV project was facing.
Nagirinya’s relatives reported the carjacking at Nateete Police Station, where the CCTV command centre is, moments after it happened. However, police officers on duty did not respond and those deployed at the CCTV command centre were absent.
Nagirinya and Kitayimbwa were later murdered, their bodies driven in the stolen car past several CCTV cameras, and dumped in Mukono, 30kms from the city, where their remains were recovered a day later.
Mr Enanga, the police spokesperson, said the suspects were captured driving the victims’ car by CCTV cameras several minutes after the matter had been reported to Nateete Police Station.
“If the CCTV command centre team were in office, they would have alerted the field officers and taken action. We wouldn’t have lost two people. The officers neglected their work,” Mr Enanga said.
Using the CCTV footage, the suspected robbers were identified by members of the public leading to their arrest and prosecution. The case is still being heard in the High Court. The police officers, who neglected their duties were also prosecuted in the disciplinary court and punished.
Mr Enanga said the officers got sentences ranging from sacking to demotion in rank.
An internal police investigation found that it was common practice to close the CCTV command centre at night. Officers would only retrieve footage of crime incidents that occurred in the night the following morning, and only if requested by their superiors.
A year later, on June 1, another incident that found a well-staffed command centre showed that the CCTV infrastructure wasn’t the silver bullet in solving crime as it had been sold to the public.
While being driven to work, the Minister of Works and Transport, General Katumba Wamala was attacked by armed men in the capital, Kampala. His daughter Brenda Nantongo and driver, Sergeant Haruna Kayondo were shot dead.
The late General Paul Lokech, who was the deputy Inspector General of Police at the time, said the suspects spent 55 minutes within three kilometres of the crime scene after the shooting.
“Our teams on foot, motorcycle squads and 999 patrols were not alert. This affected our response in countering the assailants, making cut-off points to confine them within the locality for arrest and adequately securing the scene of the crime and its surrounding,” he said. “
Despite the shooting being reported to the police almost immediately, and the suspects being captures on CCTV cameras, they were able to flee without the police in pursuit. An internal police assessment found a lack of coordination between the CCTV command centre and field police officers.
The police officers in the command centre took the blame and were charged with negligence. Other CCTV operators were reshuffled and reverted to low-grade police units. Coordination between CCTV operators and officers in the field remains a challenge and a loophole criminals exploit.
Political lens
To the police, the biggest achievement of the CCTV project has been in dealing with civil disobedience. Security agents used CCTV camera footage to hunt down suspected protestors during the November 18, 2020 protests in the central and Busoga regions after the arrest of Robert Kyagulanyi alias Bobi Wine, who was a presidential candidate, in Luuka District, Eastern Uganda.
Police spokesman Fred Enanga said most of the suspected protestors, including one who beat a female senior police officer with a hammer, were identified using the CCTV cameras.
However, official investigations later found that most of the 54 people shot dead during the disturbances were not involved in the riots or the protests.
Since the protests, the police extended CCTV cameras in areas that they suspect protests could emerge from. Indeed, the police have been able to respond quickly wherever they detect political activities, including demonstrations by opposition politicians and dissidents.
Blurred lenses
Criminal gangs have been waylaying businesspeople carrying large sums of money, mobile phones and bags in the main streets of major cities and towns in clear view of CCTV cameras.
Their victims include a Chief Magistrate of Buganda Road Court Gladys Kamasanyu who was hit with a blunt object on the head and robbed in broad daylight in front of her child’s school in Kampala City in March 2021. The gang walked away.
Kampala Metropolitan Police deputy spokesperson Luke Owoyesigyire said CCTV cameras captured the gang’s movements, but were unable to track them for long. Only one suspect was arrested months later and is currently on remand.
SCP Ssewanyana acknowledges the challenges, which he attributes to power cuts and cable cuts during excavations and road construction. “There are areas in the country where power isn’t stable. When power goes off, our infrastructure is also affected. In upcountry stations we depend on national fibre backbone. There are times when it gets problems so we can’t operate,” he said.
He said funding of the CCTV camera project is also an issue that needs to be addressed to ensure maintenance of the infrastructure. For instance, in 2021 the police wanted Shs24 billion for CCTV operations, but they were given only Shs1.3bn in the budget.
Police are forced to switch off some CCTV cameras in areas they consider non-sensitive for some hours to reduce the power costs.
Another police officer involved in maintenance said many criminals were escaping in clouds of dust. “The dust cakes on the camera lenses and you can barely see anything. Many of these cameras should be cleaned every month. The unfortunate thing is we still have to hire bucket trucks to do that work. Owners of these bucket trucks charge between Shs500,000 and Shs2m per day. You can cover a town per day. It is very expensive. We don’t have that money in our budget,” he said.
The police plan to buy its own bucket trucks next financial year to be able to maintain the cameras and reduce the cost of hiring private maintenance trucks.
Police optimistic
SCP Ssewanyana, who is also a victim of a phone snatching late last year, says the solution is more cameras with enhanced surveillance capabilities.
“The cameras that we are going to procure use artificial intelligence. Unlike the system we have now, the computers would be able to identify crime incidents and suspects automatically and alert us instantly,” he said.
He added that plans are underway to integrate data from other government agencies like Uganda Revenue Authority, vehicle registration and licensing agencies, National Identification Registration Authority, and Uganda Prisons Services to curtail movement of criminals.
“Many roads don’t have names. It has been difficult for us to direct field officers to where the crime incidents are or what suspects are fleeing to. The good thing is that some local authorities are establishing names for different roads. They would be our guide,” he said.
Mr Ssewanyana said the standards they have put in place are turning around the performance of the CCTV camera project and they are registering positive results in curbing crime.
“We are now monitoring our officers in different CCTV centres in the region and district from the headquarters. We can know who is working and who isn’t. They now know that we see what they see on the ground so they work knowing that they are being monitored,” he said.
The government has been pumping more money into the police in the last four years to curb crime. For instance, the police budget has increased from Shs524b in 2017 to nearly Shs1 trillion, supplementary budget inclusive, in 2022. The police manpower has also increased from 34,000 police officers in 2017 to 54,000 in 2022.
Police are also banking on the government plan to install monitoring gadgets in vehicles as key in fighting criminals who use motorcycles as get away vehicles. But the plan has raised concerns about privacy and civil society activists and rights defenders have warned that the plan could be unconstitutional and open to legal challenge.
