Belize & El Salvador Police Officers Receive GREAT Training

A group of police officers from Belize and El Salvador are participating in an eight-day training in the community policing initiative, known as the GREAT Programme. The Gang Resistance Education and Training programme targets at risk youths with a goal to prevent them from being recruited by gangs and then end tangled up in the criminal justice system. Police officers are given tools to teach the youth, particularly primary school children about being a good citizen and not resorting to a criminal lifestyle. Today, News Five spoke with Corporal Ciriaco Medina, who is a GREAT International Instructor, stationed out west in San Ignacio.

Ciriaco Medina

Cpl. Ciriaco Medina, GREAT International Instructor

“We have a total of twenty-one police officers from Belize and also we have fifteen police officers from Salvador who are part of the training. The GREAT programme assists us under the umbrella of community policing. As you know, Duane, it is one of the programmes…we have a lot of different community policing programmes and the GREAT programme is just one of them. And if I am not mistaken, it is one of the best programmes that community policing has as we speak right now.”

Duane Moody

“So what is the goal of this training today and what is the takeaway?”

Cpl. Ciriaco Medina

“The goal of it is one, to train more police officers because we see the need of police officers to go into the classrooms because it is for the youths and nothing is better to start educating our youths, especially the days that we are passing through as we speak right now.”