Ranking Police Officers refine delivery of the ‘Gift of Gab’

Over the years the police department, amongst various charges, has also been accused of occasionally having foot in mouth disease. That is because officers sometimes fall short when sharing information with the public. It has been a problem that the department has battled and one remedy was to disallow officers from giving interviews, sans the press officer. But hopefully those days are over. The Ministry of Police and Public Safety is sensitizing and training officers to be effective speakers.  This afternoon officers were conducting their own interviews and evaluating their responses during a media relations workshop. Raphael Martinez, the Public Relations Officer for the Ministry of Police told us more.

Raphael Martinez, P.R. Officer, Ministry of Police and Public Safety

Raphael Martinez

“This workshop is the media relations workshop. It’s a first in a series of workshops that we are holding for the police department in the city initially and then of course we go outside Belize City to the districts. Presently today we have a representation of seventeen senior officers of the police department. When I say senior officers I mean inspector and sergeants of the police department.”

Jose Sanchez

“What is the context of what is being discussion?”

Raphael Martinez

“Basically what we are doing is to sensitizing them in terms of effectively engaging the media, in terms of looking at the legality of some of their deliberations and looking at how the media sees the police and the media interfacing with each other in terms of getting the correct messages out there. We had some media personalities who came in during the course of the day to share their ideas of how they see this happening. And of course we also had the media advisor in the Ministry of Police and Public Safety who had lent her expertise to show more or less the legality of their deliberations.”

Jose Sanchez

“So we should see better answers of questions or better presentations from the officers who stand before the camera for the public?”

Raphael Martinez

“I think it is a two-way street. I believe that first the police officers would now know how to effectively communicate the right messages to the media because sometimes we say a lot of things and at the end of the day, nothing is being said. So we want them to effectively engage the media with correct message—as concise, as short as possible.”

So hopefully, the next time we have an interview with police, the message will be clear and straightforward.