Belize Police Department Launches Recruitment Drive for Squad Intake Number 98

The Belize Police Department is looking for men and women who have an interest in law enforcement to join its ranks. This week, the department issued the official call for applications for Squad Intake Number 98. The department says that application forms can be obtained online or at police stations across the country.  All applicants must be Belizean nationals with a clean police record between the ages of 18 and thirty-five years old. In a previous interview, Commissioner of Police Chester Williams explained that the department needs more boots on the ground to keep up with the rising demand for policing. Williams says the department sent a paper to Cabinet with the aim of increasing the total number of officers in the department to three thousand.

Chester Williams, Commissioner of Police: “Every time you hear the news and you listen to the discourse on social media you get the impression that nobody likes police. But the demand for policing has increased exponentially. Everywhere we go people are asking for police presence in their respective communities. We have a number of police stations that we will have to construct We’re looking at a police station in Trial Farm, a police station in Contki, a police station in Santa Elena, a police station in Cotton Tree, a police station in Teakettle. These are all police stations that are in the pipeline for construction. And with these police stations will certainly come to demand or the need for more police officers and so we have put together a cabinet paper that we will present to our minister asking the government to approve the recruitment of another 200 police officers. Presently the police department strength is at 2,400. We want to up that to 3,000 minimum and with that we should be able to make sure that we can accommodate the policing demands of the country. When I look at our police population and we compare that to country’s population we’re less than 1% and certainly it is inadequate and there is a need for us to have more police officers.”

Last week, the Cabinet approved the recruitment of 225 new officers. Police Intake Number 97 graduated in April of this year as the largest cohort of officers to pass out of the Police Training Academy on record, with a total of 250 new officers.