Police Report Crime Drop, Except Up North

Today, top brass from across the country gathered in Belmopan for the Belize Police Department’s second-quarter COMPSTAT meeting. Held at the National Police Training Academy, the session brought together senior commanders to crunch the numbers, track crime trends, and fine-tune strategies to tackle violence and improve public safety. According to Minister of Home Affairs Kareem Musa, there’s good news; major crimes are down compared to this time last year. But not everywhere. The northern region saw a slight uptick, prompting fresh discussions on how to respond.

 

Kareem Musa, Minister of Home Affairs & New Growth Industries

“COMPSTAT also affords us the opportunity to strategize most importantly based on the crime trends that we are seeing in particular areas obviously with a greater focus on the utilization of innovation and technology the allocation of our resources, patrols in hotspots in the country especially in Belize city right now that we are seeing a spike in gang violence over the last two or three weeks and so that was in essence the purpose of the COMPSTAT this morning in terms of the murder statistics for this very same period. In certain situations retaliation can be expected and so that is one of those scenarios that can definitely result  in an optic in the crime statistics increasing gang tensions increasing violence and retaliation because it only takes one murder to result in three four five six. We do have the influence of a cartel so to speak narcotraffickers influencing crime in that northern region which is why government has made it a point to focus our resources in that northern area each and every year and it is expected toward the later part of this year that we have a significant increase in the amount of resources dedicated specifically to the northern region because as you know each year for the last three years the government has allocated between eight hundred thousand to a million dollars but we see where  there is greater need for resources there because of the type of networking that the narcotraffickers are having with the Belizean players on the Belizean side.”