Mira Prioritizes Police Standards and Public Confidence in New Role

With multiple units making up the Ministry of Home Affairs, Oscar Mira spent most of today meeting with the key players.  As it relates to his vision for the Belize Police Department, Mira says one of his priorities would be the standards of police officers and the community’s confidence in the force.

Oscar Mira, Minister of Home Affairs and Enterprise: “I have been meeting with the staff here at the ministry. If you notice, there are many different departments here in the ministry and this morning I met with the staff, with the AO, with the finance officer. I do have pending meeting with the Commissioner of Police. I have forensics to deal with as well. And it is about meeting the staff, making sure that I have an adequate staff for the work that we have ahead. As I said, it’s not an easy task at this ministry. The confidence of our communities, the confidence of the Belizean people must be restored to the police department. And I think I will work very hard to bring back that pride and that confidence that I believe is lacking right now in the police department. Changes have to come. There will be changes but those changes will be aligned with the policies of making the police department better. I can see where we need to work on making sure that police goes to work every day wanting to go to work, wanting to serve the people of this country. It is not an easy job. It’s not an easy job. We take civilians from our communities, we train them, and we put them out there and believe and expect and hold them to a higher standard. The training that we do for them should hold them up to a higher standard. So we don’t look at them as any ordinary citizen. We say “but it’s the police they should be different” and I think that the confidence that the people of Belize have on their police department is something that I want to work on.”

As we noted, Mira succeeds Kareem Musa as Minister of Home Affairs and New Growth Industries.