Re-strategizing Police Efforts in Belize Rural Valley  

According to Police Commissioner Chester Williams, police efforts in the Belize Rural Valley area need to be restructured. He says that police officers who are stationed in the three villagers know the troublemakers all too well, and it is something that the department will address internally.

 

Chester Williams, Commissioner of Police

“Many of the failures in the area also had to do with policing. Poor level of policing coming from the police officers in the rural area. And so as a part of the plan moving forward, there certainly needs to be an adjustment in the police officers  deployment within rural Belize.  Many of the officers there are from the same villages where these problems are coming from and so they’re too acquainted with the players and are unable to execute their duties the way they should.  So we have to address that internally. And that is something that I have discussed with Mr. Romero, Mr. Greenwich, Mr. Barrow and Mr. Gabriel.  Additionally, we have also, since last week put in place additional patrols in the River Valley area  to see how we can conduct more  strategic operations to go after those persons who are involved. And I can tell you that over the weekend, footages with these, um, brawls at these games. And, in almost  all of these video footages, we can see that the group from Lemonal are the aggressors. And so we have to look at that very carefully and see what we can do to  adequately address the issue to try and bring this feud to an end.”