Commissioner of Police: “Burglaries Are Killing Us!”

Chester Williams

The tally on the murder rate for 2022 won’t be in for another few weeks, but what the Belize Police Department can say from now is that they have been saddled with the number of burglaries that have occurred for this year. Today, Commissioner of Police, Chester Williams cautioned property owners to take more care how they secure their place when they leave.

Chester Williams, Commissioner of Police

“Burglaries are killing us! Unfortunately it has my stats looking bad, but at the end of the day, to prevent burglaries requires more than the police. Many of these burglaries are as a result of carelessness on the part of homeowners, so homeowners need to do more in terms of securing their property, their homes when they leave. Neighbours need to do more in terms of looking out for each other. You find that sometimes a neighbour left and the other neighbours don’t know, so when you see light on and things di happen eena the house yoh think da the nieghbour deh deh, when yoh realize that thief mi deh deh. But if you had said to your neighbour that you’re going away for two, three days, if they were to see someone at the house then that would send an alarm to them that perhaps it’s thieves and they would alert the police. So it has a lot to do with more than just policing. What we will do for the Christmas season is do a burglary campaign. We’ll create some flyers and we’ll have our community policing officers and even when we do our weekly meet and greet, go out and issue these flyers and talk to people and see how best they can help to secure their properties.”