Police Meet and Greet Residents of Lake-I

A team of uniformed police officers, led by Senior Superintendent Chester Williams descended, on Mahogany Street in Belize City this afternoon where the men and women of law enforcement met with residents and business owners in the Lake Independence area.  The continuing meet and greet effort, a measure of community policing in which members of the department reach out to the public, has seen officers going into neighborhoods across Belize City to liaise with residents in a one-one-one setting.  The initiative, while increasing police presence, also serves as a deterrent to crime and violence.

Sr. Supt. Chester Williams, Regional Commander, Eastern Division South

Sr. Supt. Chester Williams

“We continue our meet and greet effort, it is something we do every week and the purpose remains the same seeing that we are approaching Christmas Day which is only two days away, we are also, as a part of the meet and greet, giving people tips for the Christmas Season.  How to stay safe and if they leave their homes what can they do to ensure that the homes are not burglarized and so forth.  But we continue to receive our report cards from the people to see how they assess us as to how we perform our duties and the feedback remains the same.  We are getting positive feedback and as we approach the end of the year we are trying to do our utmost best to keep the city as calm as we can and going into 2016 we want to continue where we left off from in 2015.  So I am very optimistic that we will close the year very good on a positive note and we will take that positive note with us into 2016 to continue to ensure the safety of people on south side Belize City.”

Isani Cayetano

“ForLakeIndependence, it’s a pretty huge neighborhood and you have different groups operating within the area, so while there may be a decrease in crime and violence there’s still a lot of ground to be covered.  Will you guys be meeting with some of those groups this evening?”

Sr. Supt. Chester Williams

“Well, yes we are also in those areas where the different gang groups reside and we continue to dialogue with them and recognize the fact that Lake Independence is a very huge area and a very challenging area to police.  I will say that we have intensified our police presence in this area, we have three patrols in this area now.  We use to have one.  We have a patrol that covers Mahogany Street then we have one to the north of Mahogany Street and one to the south of Mahogany Street so we ensure that the entire Lake Independence area is covered in terms of police patrols, either on motorcycle or vehicular patrols.  In addition to that we also have the checkpoint still in the Mahogany Street area which again is to ensure that we regulate or we take keen observations of persons who leave the area.  So we have also re-strategized our policing efforts within the area with a view to reduce crime and violence and it is paying off, it is working out for us.  We have seen a massive decrease of crimes in this area and we’ll continue to work to see that it goes down even further.”