Is Operation ACT Working Despite Shootings?
The weekend rollout of the latest crime fighting measure to be undertaken by police in Belize City is yet to yield fruit. Despite the seemingly overwhelming presence of officers in the streets during the past seventy-two hours, crime is still very much prevalent on the south side. All three shooting incidents that have taken place since Operation ACT was introduced on Friday morning were recorded in proximity of the identified hotspots where mobile command centers have been situated. While it may be too early to assess the effectiveness of the department’s effort, Commissioner of Police Allen Whylie is wasting no time. This morning, he rounded up his team for a discussion on how to improve the new strategy in light of the recent happening.
Allen Whylie
Allen Whylie, Commissioner of Police
“In respect to the launch of the operation ACT that commenced on Friday, we have had a number of our assets, human, as well as vehicular resources, deployed in the three key areas that have been identified and yes, two shooting incidents have occurred since Friday that we are presently investigating. We will continue to meet today to look again in terms of our areas of operations and the current deployments that we have on the streets and where we believe we need to make some changes and tweak those changes will be done. I must say that we are out there, we will continue to be out there. We continue to appeal for the citizens of this country to continue to provide information to the police and where we are today, we did not get there overnight. And so I want to be clear to say that although we are out there crimes will occur, but we will be dealing as much as we’re able to deal with those. Operations of these nature, you’ve always got to be reviewing your deployment, as well as information that’s being received in order to turn that into actionable intelligence. So again, I’ll be meeting with the senior people today again to look at the past seventy-two hours and see where we need to fine-tune. I can tell you that the transition for the personnel from the precinct has been completed into the twelve hour shift. So again, that should be assisting us on the grounds.”
Reporter
“Sir, but you have to be somewhat disappointed insofar as in the weekend you launched the operation five people are shot and one was killed.”
Allen Whylie
“No, I wasn’t disappointed. As I indicated, we didn’t get to where we are overnight and an operation of this nature will not have the desired impact in terms of stopping all the incidents. We’ll never be able to stop all the incidents but we need to continue to ensure that our people are in the areas that we are able to cover based on information and our review analysis. But we will continue to go after these people, I never said that the operation will stop everything but I can tell you that if we’re not out there it would be far worse.”
