One Million Dollars to Police Department in 2024/2025 Budget  

The Government of Belize has earmarked one million dollars to boost the Belize Police Department’s crime fighting strategy. This is apart from the annual budget allocated to the Ministry of Home Affairs. Today, Commissioner of Police Chester Williams explained that the monies will be used to increase the department’s technological capacity. Here is how he explained it. 

 

Chester Williams, Commissioner of Police

“We continue to look at modernizing the police and to police using technology and one of the things we are going to push on in the next financial year is to make sure that every police vehicle has a dash cam and not just a dash cam that shows what happens outside, but inside. So, it must have that dual focus for both in and out. We are also going to make sure that every police officer or as much as we can, has a bodycam. Often times there are allegations with police officers and we have seen where the bodycams can be used as either a shield or a sword. If it is that you are doing your duty the right way, then you would have no difficulty in ensuring that what is being done is captured on your bodycam. But If it is that you are going to be conducting your duty in such a way that you are not following process or procedures then you would not want the bodycam to capture. When we are looking at expanding our camera surveillance system, we are looking at he fingerprint system, so everything that has to do with technology to enhance policing is what we are going to do. The minister spoke about the issue of the field DNA testing, that is important for us especially in this era. If we have a sample where we can do the field DNA testing and it proves positive then we can send the sample to the lab to get that official result, that way it is going to eliminate the cost to send something to the DNA lab that may not comeback with a match.”