Ministry of National Security is Working to Tackle Crime

George Lovell

There has been a serious spike in murders this year, even as there continues to be a decrease in other crimes. It’s a serious problem for the Ministry of National Security which has struggled to effectively deal with the situation and the criticism. According to C.E.O., George Lovell, they’ve taken a multi-pronged approach and will do whatever it takes for as long as it takes.

Ret’d Col. George Lovell, C.E.O., Ministry of National Security

“What we observe is that there are in fact a number of these incidents that are happening from within gangs. And while it’s even difficult for us to police those incidents that occur when you have rival gangs going up against each other it’s a little more challenging for our law enforcement when from within the gang itself there are splinter groups going at each other, and that is one of the challenges we are facing. The other thing that we do note is that there are certain areas…Roaring Creek for example, where we have these gruesome sets of murders and where we have had an increase in terms of the amount of homicides when you compare them with other areas. We are in fact doing a number of things. While we have had some large numbers of recent recruits that have been deployed into these areas where we have had problems…Belize City, the Roaring Creek and Belmopan area, up in San Pedro…we have put not only larger numbers but more supervision on the ground to ensure that the Police officers go out there and do the kind of policing that we expect them to do. Another thing that we are in fact doing is to look at the approach that we are taking where we can get the community a little bit more involved. Community policing is I believe one of the things that we certainly need to do a little bit better than we are doing so that we can get better results from the efforts that we are putting in to combat the threats, especially where homicides are concerned.”