Assistant Commissioner offers safety tips for Easter Holidays

Miguel Segura

Easter, Christmas and long holiday weekends have more than just a celebratory atmosphere in common. These occasions are for families and friends to go full throttle do destinations across the country. Unfortunately, holidays are also a time when enterprising thieves take advantage of unsecured homes and properties. Following Thursday’s press briefing, Assistant Commissioner of Police and Head of Eastern Division, Miguel Segura offered some practical tips for Belizeans over this Easter weekend.

ACP Miguel Segura, Head of Eastern Division

“It has been a practice I know for us to share Easter tips and be mindful of what may occur. But I’ll start with even the incident that occurred, the kidnapping and go back to say that security starts with all of us individual. The media is a very helpful tool, the vehicle to convey that and remind the public that during this holidays that we inform the public; we want to reassure them that we will be doing our part. The reassurance is not only coming from the police in Belize City, but it is a countrywide effort and it involves other agencies such as the B.D.F., the Coast Guard in our waters and so forth. And we want to give the assurances that we will be out there with vehicle checkpoints. From the Belize City aspect, we have the precinct level doing their own operations—vehicle checkpoints. They have been through the media already informing them more or less what to look for. If we could recollect back and look at the types of crimes that normally plagues us during this time, they say opportunity makes a thief, it’s burglaries. Security is the issue instead of leaving lights and so forth.  But the neighborhood is a very good approach in making it preventative, keeping your precinct commander involved—because you have your precincts now and your resources much closer to where you live. The issue of water safety trips is one of the issues. But the key word would be supervision. I think a couple of weeks ago, we even saw a young kid in Dangriga suffocating in a vehicle. So parents are advised to keep a close eye on kids. We have robbery; issue of a young female venturing into an area. As I mentioned, security starts with yourself; to walk more areas that are frequent by more people and not isolated especially at certain time of the night.  The traffic is also one of the areas we would wish to see incident free. Use seatbelts, the consumption of alcohol and these have been incidents in our rules—fatalities and speeding. So if we can look at those aspects and encourage people to maintain within the speed limits, use of seatbelts is very important. In closing I would wish that everybody comes on board and make sure we have a safe Easter for 2013.”