Police Hold Meet and Greet in Kings Park

The eastern division of the police department has been on a community policing campaign for some time now. Officers from precincts around the city and in rural Belize have been going into neighborhoods to meet with residents to better police their areas. This afternoon, the eastern division north and south officers took to the streets of King’s Park and Officer Commanding Precinct Four, Superintendent Linden Flowers, says that while the initiative is yet to yield results, citizens are becoming better witnesses.

Supt. Linden Flowers, O.C., Precinct 4, Eastern Division

“It is to make the citizens more comfortable in speaking to the police. We share the police numbers, the emergency numbers, for the citizen if you are seeing something. And the King’s Park is not an enclave or an institution or entity by itself, so these people venture out to other parts of the citizen. Whilst you are not the victim of a crime here, you may become the victim of a crime in other parts. And we want to give them the opportunity to understand how you make a report to the police; what it entails when you are making a report to the police. I say if you are a victim of a crime, you start by coming up with some kind of identification or description of the victim or if you are involved in a traffic accident, there are some things that you need to do…when putting a case before the court, we need certain elements which if you don’t have a contact with a police or the institution of the justice system, you may miss some of these things that you want to look for.”

Linden Flowers

Reporter

“So part of it is to educate them on how to be better witnesses?”

Supt. Linden Flowers

“In the long-run yes. The first step is to educate them on how not to become a victim because some of our movements around make you more vulnerable to be a victim if you operate in a certain fashion. And after then if forbid you become a victim of a crime that you be confident to address the matter and to deter it. A major deterrence to crime is to be vigilant and to have contact with the police whom you can reach out to a number if you see something happening in your areas.”