Belize’s Commissioner of Police Seeks Presidency of Regional Police Commission

In less than one month, the Commissioner of Police, Chester Williams, will be vying for the Presidency of the Commission of Chiefs of Police and Police Directors of Central America, Mexico, the Caribbean, and Colombia (CJDCAMCC). In May, Williams was appointed as the association’s Interim-President due to his seniority as a Commissioner of Police. Yesterday, Williams explained how he was appointed, and his plans to bolster citizen security in the region.

Chester Williams, Commissioner of Police: ” We had a recent resignation of the president of the Association of Directors and Chief of Police of Central America, Mexico and Colombia. The presidency was being held by Costa Rica, the Commissioner of Police from Costa Rica but he abruptly resigned from office and so did the first vice president who is from Guatemala. With that now the most senior Commissioner in the region then assumes the presidency as interim president of the commission until the elections are held to elect a new president. It so happens that I’m the most senior Commissioner of Police in the region and so I am appointed interim president. On June 22nd of this year I will be chairing an extraordinary AGM of the association. At that AGM we’ll table the agenda which will be to look at what the association has achieved over the first six months of the year when Costa Rica was chairing and then we will look at what is left to be achieved under what we had set out to be done by the association. And at the end of that meeting we’re going to have an election of a new president and I have offered myself to be elected president for the association when that time comes. So we’ll see how it goes on that day. It works very closely with INTERPOL of the Americas and the mandate basically is to coordinate policing efforts between the member countries and as I said it has to do with Central America, Mexico, Colombia and the Caribbean because there are countries of the Caribbean like Dominica and Haiti that are also part of that association and so what is done is that all the efforts are coordinated. We would normally do what is referred to as regional operations targeting human trafficking, human smuggling, drug trafficking, cyber crime, auto theft so we have a number of agenda items that we normally deal ith on a yearly basis regionally.”

During his term, Commissioner Williams will be working along with other Police Chiefs across the region to tackle transitional crime.