Police Officers Learn Basics of Public Relations

In this newscast we have often reported on tensions between the police and the community. Well today police officers from various precincts across the country converged on Eastern Division where they attended a workshop on public relations and community policing.  The idea is to establish, maintain and improve favorable relationships between the Belize Police Department and the public.  It is a task which, according to Public Relations Officer Douglas Hyde, begins with interpersonal skills.  The class succeeds a recent training seminar in which senior officers were being thought how to build meaningful rapport with the media.

Douglas Hyde, PR Officer, Belize Police Department

“I think it’s very important on a whole for capacity building for each of our officers, specifically in the area of public relations.  Why?  Because the police officers are the ones that face the general public on a day-to-day basis.  These frontline officers of each precinct, we have over thirty-odd here on a day-to-day basis.  For the week it’s a hundred and fifty, for the three weeks it will be over four hundred and fifty police officers.  They’ll be exposed to basic skills and information when it comes to public relations.  The idea of them is that when they go back to their work they’ll take some of that information and some of that skills and implement it in their day-to-day work.”

Isani Cayetano

“Is this an initiative that will be rotating over time, in terms of bringing in officers and teaching them these elemental skills?”

Douglas Hyde

Douglas Hyde

“Through our Public Relations Unit what we have been doing for the past couple months is to have ongoing training in house.  We started off with customer care with the front desk workers.  We moved to the media relations training with the senior officers and now we are with the frontline workers who do patrolling and work the beta everyday in the community.  We want to continue these trainings.  Looking [at it] the next training may be public speaking, we want to see how the police officers can work with that.  How they speak to the public and how they approach and of course their appearance to the general public means a lot for us and knowing that these police officers serve the public we want to see the best when it comes to professional service to the public.”