Police Seek Breakthroughs in Murder Investigations During Gang Crackdown

While the men are locked away, police are hoping to make breakthroughs in several murder investigations. The department has brought charges against several men for the over fifty homicides recorded so far this year but has several cases that have seen little progress. One such case is the murder of 36-year-old Solomon Coleman. The Punta Gorda resident was gunned down last month in Belmopan but, according to his family, his murderer or a motive for his killing has been identified. His mother pleaded to the authorities last week on Love News for justice to be delivered. And, yesterday, Commissioner of Police Chester Williams explained that her call did not fall on deaf ears.

Chester Williams, Commissioner of Police: “I met just yesterday with a team of investigators as a part of what we’re doing with the SOE. I have also assembled a team of experienced investigators from major crimes, CIB, GI3 and Special Branch to look at all murders from January to present with a view to see how we can revive those investigations, go back and re-interview witnesses, go back and look at video footages to see if we’ll be able to find something that we may have overlooked in the past. So that team, which is headed by Senior Superintendent Gerald Jones, are extremely busy looking at all those cases and that matter with Mr. Coleman came up yesterday and I think that they have gotten some further information, which should be able to lead to arrests hopefully very soon. So, already we’re seeing results coming from the team that we assembled and they are also looking at the gang membership investigation where the gang members are concerned. So again, the objective is for us to be able to see how we can not just have these people in prison but to investigate the cases that they are accused of with a view to be able to successfully making arrests where those cases are concerned. So I’ll ask Mr. Coleman’s mother to just be a bit patient with us. We understand her pain and her need for wanting to see results from the police and we’ll do our best to make sure that she gets justice for whatever took place with her son.”

The police’s statistics show that major crimes are down, but murders are up compared to last year.