A Dozen SOEs, But Is Belize Any Safer?

Is another State of Emergency the answer? Belize has declared approximately a dozen, and violent crime is still a problem. Attorney Richard “Dickie” Bradley argues that the country keeps repeating the same approach without addressing the deeper social and economic problems driving criminality. He questions what another SOE will really accomplish. Here’s his take.

 

Richard “Dickie” Bradley, Attorney-at-Law

“We are all fed up with this kind of violent crime. All across the board, the citizens of Belize are fed up with what is going on. People who know say to me that you talk about a maximum of maybe 150, 200 persons. What motivates people to want to be in a gang? What’s causing the problems? They are social and psychological arguments that I can’t address, but it is a fact that we are reaching breaking point. So even though the state of emergency has been implemented, reimplemented to death, I think there are 13 states of emergency that have taken place in our country. We’ve gone nowhere. We’re right back where we start from. In fact, it’s worse. It’s worse now. We are living right now in a society where the so-called affordability cost of living is a major problem. You know, you think right now what happened is big. Watch when you jump into 2027 if we don’t deal with this problem. The rush of criminality will come from people who are desperate, angry, and don’t care. You can’t live like, we can’t continue to live like this. We just can’t, cannot do it. So your question is the problem that we are fed up and the government is under pressure. And so, well, if I have to go back to SOE, what is the police telling them? The police are telling me we need one SOE. The police don’t come up with no kind of solution to the problem.”

 

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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