ComPol Blames Gang Violence on Recent Concert

There has been a spike in gang violence across Belize City in the last seven days, resulting in multiple shooting incidents that have left three men dead and several other persons injured, including businesswoman Doris Grant.  The spate of shootings began in the early hours of June sixteenth, when Grant and her common-law husband Austin Underwood came under gunfire as they drove home from a concert.  In the wake of that attack, there has been an upsurge in gang-related violence that Commissioner of Police Chester Williams attributes to the music played at the event.

 

Chester Williams, Commissioner of Police

“This gang world issue, there are persons who are very thin-skinned, they are very insensitive and it takes just a little to spark them.  I have always said, we must do our work in such a way where we do not allow one idiot to go and do something stupid and then that creates or that would normally create that chain of events.  We saw where, again, as a society we accept too much negativity.  I don’t know who inspired anybody to have brought Trinibad to Belize.  Trinibad cyant go play, or cyant go deejay da many countries in the Caribbean.  But we weh done have wah very vulnerable society where gangs are concerned, we wah bring that kinda deejay to Belize.  Right at Trinibad, da deh everything start, you know.  Right there, it started and it spills over.  Now, in terms of dealing with the whole issue, we tried our best to clip the root, but by that time ih done spread already.  So we saw where it went from Southside to Supal Street, to BLC, to PIV and then now to Conch Shell Bay.  So it spreads.  It just takes one spark and it spreads like a wild fire.”