Compol Says SOE Does Not Mean Defeat

With the implementation of the State of Emergency, comes several criticisms. The Belize Police Department now must resort to delegating a large portion of its manpower and resources to monitor hotspots and known gang members. Today, Police Commissioner Chester Williams was asked if this latest move was an admission of defeat by the department. Here is how he answered:

 

Chester Williams, Commissioner of Police

“To say a failure of the police, what does the police have to deal with? The police have to deal with the failure of society. You’re brothers, you’re children, your uncles, those persons who choose to live a violent lifestyle, da noh the police raised them. They’re raised in their respective homes and they turn out to be what many families do not desire them to have become, but that’s how they become. And so the police have to end up dealing with those persons. And yes, the country is huge. We all have a certain number of police officers. We can’t tag police to every criminal to make sure that we babysit them, that they don’t go and commit crime. So, to want to see that because we have the flare ups, it’s because of failure of police. I think that the police have been doing fairly well in making sure that we, we police the entire country in the most peaceful way that we can and try to make people feel comfortable. Yes, sometimes we fall short of that, but I’ve always said that the society have a role to play and we have working with us, the multi sectoral approach to fighting crime under the LIU. And we are seeing where other sectors of society are playing a role. But if the propensity or the mindset in the homes are not changed, then we’re always going to have this problem. When we have parents who are condoning what their children is doing, it is going to create problems. And already we are seeing where parents are calling, my son not this, my son not that, when in fact they know they pikni ney shoot gun. Right, but the minute the child is dealt with by the police, the parents want to come forward and swear for their children, we have to be real.”