Commissioner of Police addresses crime situation

The daily news has been plastered with crime. In fact, this week alone, there have been two heinous murders and two primary school kids were injured in a shooting. But why the eruption of violence—particularly in the streets of Belize City—and what are the cops doing about it? The Minister of National Security has been quiet, but Commissioner of Police Crispin Jeffries addressed the issue following an encounter with the media on Wednesday.

Crispin Jeffries, Commissioner of Police
“We contribute the incidents to the ongoing rivalry among young persons. We saw a spate of incidents that we knew would have had some rivalries. We stepped up our responses by patrols, our intelligence. Our intelligence team is meeting as we speak in this room to look at other measures but the information that we have been working with has died off and there has been some other incidents that have evolved. But we do know that there are some other rivalries that are taking place but we have not gotten contact information to respond proportionately. The response in terms of time and speed is high, but in terms of being able to preempt, we are not getting the level of intelligence or information that we need. That is the incident with the youth that died may have been one of acquaintance. The information coming out of that neighbourhood is not sufficiently detailed for us to suggest that it was something that we could have prevented. We are looking at whether or not we should revisit the provisions of the curfew law, we are looking at some neighbourhoods that we may want to go in and search thoroughly, we are seeking the support of some people from the other social agencies to do some intervention work, we are working with the C.Y.D.P., the Y.F.F. and other programs. But these are not necessarily covering all the basis so there’s more that needs to be done.”