BUWEMBO: Is it not sheer madness to imagine all the brave police at the doctor’s?

It is now official: all policemen and women in Uganda are to have their heads examined. According to last week’s announcement, the drastic measure was occasioned by rising brutalisation of suspects, violence against marital partners and suicide by our keepers of law and order.                                                  

The mass mental examination will be conducted by psychology experts from Makerere University and will result into immediate remedial action for those found with mental afflictions.

Besides delivering a mentally healthy police force, the findings will be an indicator of the country’s mental health issues. The numerical police strength, an often quoted public statistic at 43,000 personnel, is almost exactly one thousandth of Uganda’s population.

For while the government’s statistics bureau put the population recently at just over 40 million people, development partners put it at between 42 and 45 million.

Going by their educated projections over the years, it is more convincing to take the development partners’ figures. Fortunately, we are not in Tanzania and so do not face any risk of being arrested for quoting foreign sources. So the ratio of police to population in Uganda is 1:1,000.

With police recruited from the whole country, the force’s only major difference with the public is the gender mix. For while females constitute 51 per cent of the country’s population and males 49 per cent, in the police service the males could be outnumbering the females by a ratio of 4:1. Otherwise in most other aspects, police reflect the people from which it is recruited.

Actually, the mental ‘unwellness’ could be less in the police than in the public or any other public body. If police kill about 10 people per year, public kill 10,000 people, thus keeping the ratio but in reverse at 1,000:1 in ‘favour’ of the public. Policemen have consistently committed six suicides per year for some time now. The public should be committing 6,000, again keeping the reverse 1,000:1 ratio. If cops harass their spouses, civilians mistreat theirs more, often killing them.

As for abusing the rights of others, the police are about the cleanest. More teachers beat children than police beat people! And you don’t hear police officers accused of grabbing peasants’ land. But some army generals seem to be having a deadline to beat in accumulating square miles.

In fact, cops know how to manage their ambitions very well. In every presidential election held in Uganda’s history every five years (there have been five such elections), there has always been a soldier contesting.

In 2016 we had eight candidates of whom three were soldiers plus a senior spymaster. So only four candidates were real civilians.

But no police officer has sought to rule the country. In fact, of the eight presidents Uganda has had since independence, only three have been pure civilians. There were five military rulers and not a single police officer.

Once in five years you get only a couple of retired police officers getting elected to parliament, less than the musicians. (In 2021, we expect some 30 musicians to stand for parliament maybe 10 will go through).

Some years ago, the transport ministry wanted to check the heads of the taxi drivers because their actions always seemed irrational.

The drivers protested and the plan to examine their apparent madness were abandoned. But yes, it is good to check the cops’ heads.

However, extrapolating the findings on the population would certainly understate the general problem.