Community Policing Vs Paramilitary Policing – The Results

Chester Williams

Interestingly, the decline in violence was not a result of strong-arm tactics by the Police, nothing to do with the infamous GSU breaking down doors and bones. Apparently, it’s quite the opposite. According to Commander of Eastern Division South Chester Williams, community police was able to achieve what no show of paramilitary force ever did. He told News Five that while resources have traditionally been funnelled to enforcer units like the GSU, the success of community police has gotten the attention of government and, hopefully, government’s green light on additional resources.

Sr. Supt. Chester Williams, Regional Commander, Eastern Division South

“That is the same thing that we are doing, what the Minister has been harping on Police Officers to do, which is to push the community policing effort. Quite naturally if it was being done before but not at the scale that it is being done now, therefore it was not as effective as it is today, then the investment would go where the government sees it is being effective – that is to have the paramilitary arm of the Police Department go into the street and best see how they can calm down any situation which might arise. But now they are seeing that community policing is working and can work. We have seen likewise where the government has started to invest in giving us more equipment. Yes we know that the government is financially strapped. We cannot get everything we need overnight. So as a result of that we try to work with what we have until we can get what we need. I think that very soon we will be benefitting from some vehicles from the US Embassy. When we get those they will be added to our fleet of vehicles on the Southside Belize City, and hopefully then we will have an adequate number of vehicular resources to be able to effectively Police Southside Belize City much more than we are today.”

If midnight passes without a murder in the Southside, it would mean that there were no murders in that zone in two months of this year – September and December.