Police Comstat Figures Reveal 2023 Recorded 87 Murders

Chester Williams

2023 is officially history and, as we had reported in our end-of-year review, it did so with far fewer murders than in the immediate past years. Today, the top brass of the Belize Police Department sat with Minister of Home Affairs Kareem Musa to discuss the 2023 crime report card. Commissioner of Police Chester Williams said the department’s crime-fighting strategy worked well last year. The ComPol and Minister Musa told the media how they intend to keep those figures down in 2024.

Chester Williams, Commissioner of Police

“When we look at the overall comprehensive figures for 2023 and 2022, we were dead even in terms of major crime reported to the police. When we look at the major crimes where court actions were reported, as opposed to court actions were not requested, we have a slight increase compared to 2022. But the most important thing, or the most important achievement for 2023 was reduction in murders, where our figure for 2023 was 87 as opposed to 113 for 2022. So we have a decrease of something around 24 thereabout or just around 23% reduction in murders when it compared to 2022. So while we do celebrate our achievement for 2023, we still do believe that there’s a lot that needs to be done. And today we’ll be looking at our strategy to see what we can do better moving forward to make sure that – we know 2024 is going to be difficult for us because the figures for 23 are so good. And when you have a good figure for the year prior, it’s always difficult to beat, but we will do our best to see what we can do to make sure that we continue to keep the figures going down.”

Kareem Musa, Minister of Home Affairs

“Receiving the type of statistics that we get at Comstat is not just a good measurement tool. It’s also an accountability tool for each precinct and each formation, but most importantly, it is a tool to form our strategies for the coming year. Like you rightly mentioned, I think we had a very successful year, at least when it came to the reduction in murders. Certainly it’s a huge achievement for the Commissioner of Police and for all police officers across this country. And I take this opportunity to thank them as well as all our partners like L.I.U., like the business community, all of those partners that are truly engaged with us in our fight against crime. I think what we’re learning from the statistics this year. Uh, is that property crimes in particular burglaries are robbed and robberies are areas that we need to focus on. And I think that this is where each and every one of us plays a pivotal role in the fight against crime because as neighborhood watch groups are now growing in popularity, that is where we see a lot of the success because police officers cannot be everywhere all at once. We know that, and so we need the law-abiding citizens which make up 390 something thousand of us that can come together and form neighborhood watch groups within our area to report on any suspicious activity to the police officers. And the police have a responsibility to look at those blogs and to respond because if you do not respond, that is where that relationship breaks down. So we need to work hand in hand, police and community. And I can promise you that those property crimes would go down, if we have greater participation of members of the public.”