Christmas crime will be controlled says Police Boss

The Belize Police Department has placed more boots on the ground in Belize City to keep crime down during the Christmas season. The force is beefing up its patrols in known hotspots to deter an increase in robberies and burglaries synonymous with the holidays. But will the shift in the department’s focus lead criminals to operate outside of the city where police presence is minimal? Minister of Home Affairs, Kareem Musa says that the force is stretched thin but the police are doing their best to control crime across the country.

Kareem Musa, Minister of Home Affairs: “As we did in September when we had the carnival we definitely increased our patrols, we came up with different strategies, we looked at the hotspot areas that we were expecting crime and so we definitely put our boots to the ground in those particular areas we put even more boots on the ground for the carnival season likewise in November or November 19th and so we are hoping that for the entire month of December we will see a more intensified approach from the police department. The Commissioner has assured us that yes we will target those areas that have been problematic over the last few years and especially look out for opportunists, criminals who are looking for that opportunity to take advantage of people we’ll be definitely looking at that and trying to prevent robberies and theft and burglaries from taking place. It’s a very large country to police with only two police officers but we have to put our officers in strategic places as close as possible to all the hotspots yes and even in the areas where we do not expect crime to happen. As you know we have new recruits coming out hopefully by mid next year, they just recently went into the police training academy 150 new recruits and so we will get that increase next year but for the time being we do have to utilize the resources, the man power that we do have in the best possible way that we can.”