Police Dept. will use technology to combat crime
Earlier in the newscast we reported on the brevity of the controversial Crooks Report and at today’s conference at the Raccoon Street Police Station, police told the press that the department is turning to a new strategy to combat the alarming levels of crime. And this involves the use of technology that will balance expertise and technical know-how on a limited budget. News Five’s Jose Sanchez tried to find out how this technology will bring results to the fight against crime.
Jose Sanchez
“There is a general feeling that because we have a problem with witnesses testifying, perhaps maybe the police needs to shift more to forensics. Will we ever have a fully operational forensics lab that we can depend upon?”
Carlos Perdomo, Minister of National Security
“I think we will. This is one of our programs that is slowly developing. If you look back three of four years ago there was hardly anything. But setting up a really first class forensic lab is extremely expensive. For example, to get into DNA you’re talking about one million Belize. So we do have a time line. This year we’re going to get the ballistic machine, next year we look at it—it’s a program that is slowly progressing.”
Assistant commissioner of Police Crispin Jeffries said that old fashion police work has made them able to pinpoint the areas of Belize City which are hot spots for criminal activity.
Crispin Jeffries, Assistant Commissioner of Police
“The two maps we have are subdivisions of Belize City. What happened is that we’ve looked at the reported crime over the last eighteen months and we’ve seen that these are areas that we can refer to under the crimes control and criminal justice act as crime ridden areas. We’ve marked them out just for displaying purposes but they can be seen as the areas where we know. For instance they are mostly parts of the city and the south side which include that are covered by Mayflower Street, Vernon Street Starstoon Street, where we’ve seen a lot of shootings over the recent months as well as over the last eighteen months. We’ve seen some incidents since the start of the year in the Jane Usher Boulevard Area and we’ve also looked at areas near St. Martin DePorres area and we’ve had a series of incidents in the last eighteen months Flamboyant Street, Correander Street and we’ve also seen some in the area just behind the boulevard on Kraal Road and that at area between St. John’s Vianney and Faber’s Road.”
Tapping of phone lines, usage of metal detectors, video cameras, and mobile police stations are all tools that they are suing or expect to use in the coming year.
Allan Whylie, Assistant Commissioner of Police
“Belize City, just like other communities, has grown. It is not always practical to erect a permanent structure but nonetheless we are seeking ways to provide improved policing services to these communities. The mobile police station, as the commissioner said, is a vehicle that officers will be attached to work in certain areas and will be delivering certain services to the community. That will be to take reports, patrols in that area. It is a part of the rolling out of the precinct style or directive patrols that will be taking place from Faber’s Road police station and the Mahogany Street police station.”
In two of the hot spots, grenades have exploded. Images of officers and the B.D.F. scouring high and low in darkness for evidence still resonate. So in addition to a mobile police station, the police department has seen it necessary to add metal detectors to its arsenal against crime.
Jose Sanchez
“When it comes to technology is one of the areas in which the department has been lacking. How will this equipment help you?”
Crispin Jeffries
“This is search equipment; it is basically a metal detector. We’ve seen where many times at night in the dark we are unable to find some of the shell cases when we have shootings at night. This sort of equipment will assist our search officers to cover the scene more thoroughly in the dark and then because there are times that you leave those things on the scene overnight and the police doesn’t get back in time, you either guard the scene or need to go back, search the are and remove the items because it’s a part of a crime scene. So this is search equipment to deal with metal.”
Jose Sanchez
“I know we’ve installed cameras at key locations. I am aware of a few incidents of people being killed, for example near Pound Yard Bridge. I’ve never heard of those cameras ever being used in a case. No one has been able to answer the simple question “what’s happening with the cameras that you’ve installed?”
Allan Whylie
“Part of the difficulty with the cameras is that in some areas the lighting at night is poor and the visibility is poor. We’ve also experienced some technical problems such as power failure; some of the cameras don’t come back on. Just this week we had one of the technicians from Panama came in and he was able to get up one of the cameras that had been down. During that period another camera went down. So he has assured us that he will send back a technician to assist us. Part of the difficulty with that program also is that at the time when it was being implemented, government did not agree to training or a maintenance plan—the old government. So we have been having been depending on the goodwill of the cable companies and B.T.L. when cameras go down to assist us with bucket trucks and technicians to go up. When this expert returns from Panama we will be taking two of our persons from the Police Information Technology Unit. That person will be given then some training for a two or three days period and then our local people should be able to repair those cameras. But those are some of the difficulties we’ve been facing with the cameras.”
Jose Sanchez
“Going back to big brother and wire tapping, when it comes to telephones will you be looking specifically at organized criminal activity or will you be looking at low level, maybe street peddlers? Where are we going with this phone tapping?”
Gerald Westby, Commissioner of Police
“Well I think I made it clear we are it’s a matter of looking at the organized crime and the major plasters. Certainly we will not look at tapping Jules’ phone because we are not interested in what Jules has to say in terms of that so it’s a matter of looking at organized crime.”
And hopefully these strategies and the lessons from the Crooks report will help to decrease the crime rate for 2009. Reporting for News Five, Jose Sanchez.
