The Inspector General of Police Gen. Kale Kayihura has disbanded the Joint Security Agencies Special Operations Unit (SOU) and transferred all its personnel to the Flying Squad Unit of Police barely two years since its inception.
Kayihura has since shifted Flying Squad headquarters from the Kampala Central Police Station premises to Nalufenya in Jinja leaving only a detach in Kampala.
The Joint Special Operations Unit (SOU) whose headquarter has been at Nalufenya Police Station in Jinja District was established in 2014 during the Busoga aimed at weeding out operatives of the Allied Democratic Front (ADF) rebel group within the region at a time of rampant attacks on Muslim clerics.
The unit which has been under the direct leadership of IGP Kayihura was formed to integrate talent and specialties from different Security Agencies to help in high profile intelligence and operations.
About a month ago, General Kayihura ordered all operatives of the Special Operations Unit to re-enforce the Flying Squad Unit after all its personnel were sent for training at Kabalye Police Training School.
The order was issued after a resolution reached by the Joint Operations Command (JOC) in which all heads of different National Security Agencies sit.
After the shift of personnel, a performance analysis of SOU's operations was carried out and it was agreed that the unit has been dormant and all its work can still be done by Flying Squad.
"We had a long discussion and we resolved that there was nothing SOU was doing that Flying Squad cannot do, moreover the Unit was not considered in the budgeting process," says a member of JOC who preferred anonymity.
Flying Squad is a unit under the Directorate of Criminal Investigations which is mandated to handle all arms-related crimes. The Directorate also has a division, Special Investigations Division, whose mandate is almost the same as that of Flying Squad but with a wider scope.
SID is mandated to handle investigations of all high profile cases including murder, robbery, and fraud among others.
The formation of SOU had created a duplication of roles among the three units given that they all have intelligence, Investigations and Operational arm.
The police spokesperson Andrew Felix Kaweesi could not be reached for a comment as he was not picking his known phone numbers.
