Police reveal initiatives to bolster safer streets
On the eve of the Battle of St. George’s Caye Day and the Uniformed Parade on the twenty-first which is essentially a parade of primary and high school students, many are wondering tonight if security can be guaranteed around the country. And with much revelry still to come in the September celebrations, the government and the police are on the drawing board finding ways to improve their intelligence and response mechanisms. At Monday’s press conference following the grenade assault, we asked P.M. Barrow whether it is best to take a proactive approach other than a reactive one to intercept these deadly weapons. Commissioner of Police, Gerald Westby, spoke of new initiatives to bolster the Police Department.
Gerald Westby, Commissioner of Police
“We’re also looking at retaining the service of retired explosive ordinance personnel that have retired from the B.D.F. I had approached him last week and we are sending up that recommendation as we speak to the Ministry of National Security so that our personnel, we can have somebody on our team that is trained that can help us in terms of training for the police because the police life is also in danger out there and also to help us develop necessary protocols to deal with that. We’ve also created a task force headed by Assistant Commissioner Jeffries and other senior officers to look at all of these grenade incidents. We have also continued to work with our international counterparts through Interpol to trace the origin of these grenades. We’ll also continue collaboration with the neighbouring countries because some of these grenades may originate from the neighboring countries and so we continue to collaborate with them.”
Prime Minister Dean Barrow
“With respect to the courts, there is to be the launch of a programme right after the September celebrations that’s being spearheaded by the ministry and a Crimes Control Council and that plan involves coordination of efforts between the ministry and the Director of Public Prosecutions office and the judiciary. In particular, the special court that we talked about, that we sometimes refer to as the gun court, has to be chartered. The idea is not necessarily to legislate for new elements to constitute this special court, it is just to ensure that perhaps one of the existing magistrates’ courts is used as a vehicle to deal with this specialized stream of offences to be tried in that particular court. Together with that, the people at the Prosecutions Branch and at the Director of Public Prosecutions office will have to be incorporated so that, as you alluded to, we can have the kind of cooperation that will mean that persons that are charged with these sorts of offences are dealt with speedily and effectively. It’s not that these things are coming through the legitimate border entry points and so that’s why I’m saying, sure we can perhaps double up on man power at those entry points but that might be perfectly useless if in fact people are coming through La Union. So the key is intelligence efforts and we are making the attempts to strengthen the intelligence gathering process as much as we can.”
Saturday’s incident also highlights another weakness, the medical services at the Karl Heusner Memorial Hospital which we are told does not have the capacity to handle mass casualties. Officials say victims would have had to be shuttled to other medical areas in the country or abroad, depending on the emergency needs. The K.H.M.H. can only accommodate twelve people in emergency cases at a time.
