The police would like to clarify on an online story published by the nilepost.co.ug under the title “leave generals alone “, Enanga tells police officers. We would like to dismiss the story as false and misleading, and further inform the public, that it is on record, during the weekly police press briefing, the PRO, stated “we want to strongly condemn such acts of brutality upon uour officers”, and to further congratulate our officer on the degree of patience and restraint exhibited.
In the wider explanation during the question and answer session, the PRO stated that “As regards the question of Esther Namaganda, even during our training, we are prepared, because policing is a very dangerous profession, where you get to interact with people of all sorts of character, those who are violent in nature, those who can be sort of mild but easily instigated or influenced, so the environment that we do policing actually tames us.
He continued “but the one thing that we have always guided our officers on is carrying out a risk assessment, you know, it is not necessary for them to go to extents of sacrificing their life and by the way with modern policing these days, it is more of promoting restraints, that if you see you can’t manage a situation, then it is better for you to withdraw. And that is why management came out to congratulate the lady because she didn’t retaliate, she was more of laid back and let the officers to handle her in the manner that they did. Now, that was a professional way, otherwise if she had retaliated, we would have expected more disturbing scenario, now, there are always lessons that arise out of this and of course the directorate of traffic is getting to bring out lessons on how to de-escalate situations like this .It all goes about to issues of risk management during policing”
There is not any stage at which the PRO made the remarks reported by the journalist. We strongly believe the NBS journalist Jordan Mubangizi made a deliberate and orchestrated attempt to disinform the public after he dishonestly delivered an exaggerated version to the public at the expense of fairness.
It is evident that the journalist contaminated the information and explanations given by the PRO, with his own “Imposter” content and dissemination by their website as if it was “straight news”. We want to advise him that credibility of News requires getting facts right, to avoid putting question marks on the brand you are trying to build as a professional source of News.
We further urge the media house to investigate the veracity of their journalist and further scrutinise the internal self regulation structures that could have allowed for such errors or fakery to occur. We pray that this acts as a wakeup call.
The police will continue working together with all media houses to promote their business model in a manner that accurately reflects cardinal principles of journalism. Trust in reporting that is accurate, accountable and independent is essential to winning over audiences and enabling of public sphere in which debate can occur on the basis of shared facts. We have uploaded a full transcript and video of the press briefing that was conducted on Monday, 25th February, 2019 on our website . www.upf.go.ug. for reference.
CP Enanga Fred
Police Spokesperson
25th February 2019
