145 New Police Officers Graduate from Training Academy
Today on the parade square at the National Police Training Academy, one hundred and forty-five recruits from squad number ninety-six officially became police officers ready for deployment to their respective posts across the country. The aim is to increase the department to about two thousand five hundred officers. News Five’s Duane Moody reports.
Duane Moody, Reporting
One hundred and two men and forty-three women stood proudly in the sweltering heat in Belmopan, as they officially made it to the rank and file of the Belize Police Department. These new police officers successfully completed seven months of intense training that began back in November of last year.
Eric Martinez
Eric Martinez, Police Officer, Squad #96
“A hundred and fifty men and women left their friends, families and loved ones behind to embark on a seven-month journey in hope of becoming a police office. Recruit police training is the transformation of a civilian into an effect police officer which makes it a very intense and compact process.”
Commissioner of Police Chester Williams says that majority of these officers will be deployed to the northern districts, with Eastern Division getting the least.
Chester Williams
Chester Williams, Commissioner of Police
“Those officers are now a part of the rank of the Belize Police Department and we anticipate that with the injection of this new squad into our ranks that we will be able to cover more grounds in terms of providing citizen security to our people. They have been distributed across the country with the northern districts getting the majority of them followed by the west and the south and the eastern region getting the least, which is not normally the case. But again, we have seen that there is a cry or a call for police officers in different parts of the country. We have expanded in certain areas and this squad, as much as it will not give us the amount of officers we need to carry our expansion, it gives us that start that we need. And we are hoping that with the next squad, squad ninety-seven, we will be able to carry out our expansion in its entirety.”
During his address today, Home Affairs Minister Kareem Musa says that these officers are taught to rethink how they view themselves and the way they carry out their duties.
Kareem Musa
Kareem Musa, Minister of Home Affairs
“We have revised the curriculum, we have revised the criteria for you to become a police officer and so far we have not had any complaints from squad ninety-five and we are looking forward to likewise exemplary performance from this particular squad. As you saw, we even issued an award for human rights – success in the human rights courses that they took. And so, there is a new revised curriculum that we’ve been working with over the last two or three years with Doctor Priscilla Brown, the dean of the academy. And it is excellent performance so far and we are looking forward to greater things from both squad ninety-five and ninety-six. It’s not just about respecting human rights, it is about restoring the confidence and trust that the Belizean people have in the police department. That is a pillar that we have been working on since we came into office in 2020 and that is something that we continue to drive home because at the end of the day, it’s not limited to two thousand two hundred police officers. There are three hundred and ninety thousand law-abiding citizens who can help those two thousand two hundred officers in the fight against crime.”
But is it hard to increase and retain police officers? ComPol Chester Williams explains that the goal is to reach two thousand six hundred police officers by the end of the year.
Chester Williams
“Those officers who are not able to keep up with the trend or where we want to go, then certainly we have to part ways with them. But apart from dismissals, we do have a high attrition rate of resignations – persons who are retiring, persons going off medically unfit, etc so the numbers are really hard to maintain. We are trying to reach at least two thousand six hundred by the end of this year, but I doubt we will be able to achieve that. Squad ninety-seven is supposed to be two hundred and fifty so it is going to be higher than this one and we believe that with that squad, it will put us close to the two thousand six hundred number that we are trying to reach at this time.”
Duane Moody for News Five.
