Police Department Understaffed Due to COVID-19

Chester Williams

ComPol Williams says that the department has been stretched thin and with officers out, they have had to make some changes with duty scheduled to accommodate the shortage in officers, while still carrying out the mandate of the department to fight crime.  

Chester Williams, Commissioner of Police

“We are working understaffed due to the COVID-19 pandemic and I am sure that we are not the only department that is experiencing that at this time. And so we have to find ways and means as to how we can go around that. So we have a number of officers who are being asked to work extra and they are compensated with time off in lieu of working extra. We do have our routine policing things that we need to do and we have the COVID-19 regulations. And these are things that we must ensure we enforce. We still have the gang situation in Belize City; again, the precincts are extremely short of manpower and we have not been able to cover our usual deployments. But despite that, we still can pretty much say we have a grip on crime and it all goes back to the efforts of the police officers. As I’ve said before, as police officers, we are special breed of people, even though for the most part, we are not given the level of recognition that we rightly deserve. We are not doing our job for popularity; we are doing it because it is something that we love.”