Home Affairs Ministry Defends Strategy Amid Post-SOE Violence

Less than two weeks after the State of Emergency was lifted, violence has flared up again, and now, doubts are growing about the effectiveness of the crackdown. Was the SOE successful, or are these latest killings a sign it fell short? We put those questions directly to the Ministry of Home Affairs. CEO Rear Admiral Elton Bennett weighed in on the policing strategies used during the emergency and whether the recent spike in crime undermines its impact. Here’s what he had to say.

 

Rear Admiral Elton Bennett, CEO, Ministry of Home Affairs

“Indeed we had relied upon different lines of efforts during the SOE. We had a very hard approach targeting very hard criminals, those who are affiliated to gangs mainly in Belize City. You would have recognized that the SOE expanded beyond the limits of Belize City and went into some areas to ensure that we can target some of those individuals. Those were some hard approaches and they work very well. However, to complete the hard approach there must always be additional line of efforts of intervention and mediation. So those occurred as well. even those caught up by the SOE and incarcerated at the Kobe Foundation. The LIU had at least two, sometimes three sessions with those who were incarcerated. Those were intended to mitigate some of the tensions that existed between the different groups.”

 

Paul Lopez

“When we look at the spate of violence over the last weekend, is that an indictment on the work done during the SOE?”

 

Rear Admiral Elton Bennett

“Not at all, I believe these individuals are very hard to crack and regardless of what intervention effort we may make attempt at, these individuals are very hard to deal with when it comes to changing their intend. All we can do is to make every effort to have the hard police presence and try to achieve deterrence through policing efforts and make every effort to go into these individual communities, which we did to a large extent.”

 

Belize City and its surrounding rural communities were under a state of emergency for one month.

 

Attention readers: This online newscast is a direct transcript of our evening television broadcast. When speakers use Kriol, we have carefully rendered their words using a standard spelling system.

 

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