Recommendations made to CitCo on how to tackle crime in the Old Capital

mary Vasquez

Just over a month ago, on May fifth, the Belize City Council teamed up with various activists from Belize City to convene a citizens-centered summit with ten sub-committees aimed at addressing violence in the old capital.  And after endless consultations, today Mayor Zenaida Moya Flowers held a public task force meeting and press conference along with the Chief Executive Officer of Operation RESTORE Belize, Mary Vasquez, and others to share the status of an action plan.  From the various sub-committees came numerous recommendations.  According to Vasquez, key among the proposals are issues to address cleaning up the Police Department and speeding up the judicial system.

Mary Vasquez, C.E.O., Restore Belize Programme

“We’ve identified a set of goals and the first one is to restore confidence in the Police Department and the way that we have determined that we would achieve this is by transforming the Police Department into an ethic based and community oriented law enforcement agency and that’s a mouthful because, basically, it addresses a lot of the problems of , I’ll  say irregular or even criminal behavior that we’ve seen sometimes on behalf of some of the law enforcers. Specifically, most of what will be done centers on the recommendations of the Crooks Report, and I have to say that the police department has already begun implementing certain aspects of the Crooks Report; but we recognized that not enough has been done. People are not seeing any visible effects from that, and so that needs to be accelerated and really ramped up and so recent appointment of a Minister for Police and Public Safety will ensure that we have that kind of targeted and very focused management to address those problems to make sure that the reform takes place quickly.  Its also recognized that there are problem in the judicial system and which has led to a very low rate of convictions, so even when the police do their work and catch the offenders then it’s not always possible for them to have justice. Then another thing that was brought up, that sometimes people without being convicted are kept on remand for so long, it’s similar to a sentence.  So the bottom line is that justice is not being delivered efficiently or effectively and so there needs to be a look at the judiciary to ensure that those weaknesses are dealt with.”

The ten sub committees, which are dealing with issues ranging from youth development, to social reform, education development, religious support, economic and family development, each have their own tasks to identify the problems and come up with action plans that would address those issues.  In the months ahead the organizers say they will establish safe zones in the high crime areas.  Chair of the Prison Review Committee, former Superintendent of Prisons, Bernard Adolphus, presented one solid proposal that would re-introduce prisoners back into society, using half-way houses.  And the chairmen of other sub-committees also had concrete ideas for improving the situation.

Bernard Adolphus, Chair, Prison Review Committee

bernard adolphus

“You have a number of prisoners or people who at least don’t have anywhere to go or cannot be accepted home because of one reason or the other. And it is believed that halfway houses could be required to help. It’s not a long term thing, the prisoner will not be there for five years, three years, etc. Once you are in a halfway house, we have selected, we found one—what we don’t know if we can acquire this—is at the ten miles from the Boom Bridge, possible halfway house for ex-convicts.  We are not certain, it’s possible, but we are just looking at it and see if the possibility can occur, get information and see if we can get it. Because if we have a halfway house, we don’t want it in the city we want it outside of town so that people can help themselves with farming, etc and get them prepared.”

Rhenae Nunez, Chair, Public Reform Accountability

“The first recommendation seemingly operates on the premise that the police and other public officials are corrupt and they have abandon adherence to their code of ethics. Our committee recommends that the code of ethics that should generally govern all public officers and officials be revisited and examined for its relevance to today and where it is not, recommendations for the improvement should be made; to ensure that the revision is holistic and relevant, the social partners should be included in the exercise as other societal stakeholders.”

Sebastian Cayetano, Chair, Social Reform

“So far we have remained particularly focused on parents and children, children and parents. In our discussion we realized that as of June twenty-fifth, primary schools will be closed for July and August and that a lot more of our school aged students will roam the streets at night and exposed and involved themselves in social ills and even be used in illegal activities. This is a serious concern to our committee. It is to address these activities that this committee is working very hard to bring back curfew for children sixteen years and under in Belize City.”

But while the groups have their own plans to address crime and violence in the City, Mayor Zenaida Moya Flowers says both the municipal and central governments will have a hand in the effort.

Zenaida Moya Flowers

Zenaida Moya Flowers, Belize City Mayor

“In this case the government, the local businesses and the religious leaders will be going in particular areas. They will be working together to ensure that there is positive effect in those areas in terms of the social issues. After we chose these particular blocks—that’s what we will be doing this Thursday at four o’clock—we will be going out. The dream centre representatives, a hundred and seventy-five of them, will be coming in July to work with our own religious support committee members.”

The programme will continue over the coming months to advance the initial action plans and to conduct checks and balances.