The first quarter of the year ended yesterday March 31st. and Police released their quarterly statistics today. Those show that major crime is up for the first quarter of 2009 compared to the same period of last year. And it’s up sharply: from 739 in the first quarter of 2008 to 910 for the first quarter of 2009. That’s 23%, almost a one quarter increase. And what’s gone up the most are burglaries by 17%, theft by 26% and robberies by 50%.
And you might be surprised to know that the first quarter of 2009 – which had been deadly - registered one less murder than the same period last year. Presently, there have been 28 murders in 2009. The great majority of those murders, 17, have been in the Belize district, 13 of those in the city and a division by division breakdown, show that 7 of them happened in Port Loyola and three in Caribbean Shores. Arrests for major crimes have also gone up by an impressive 33%.
And turning to road safety, encouragingly there were fewer traffic fatalities. Only four accidents were fatal, compared to 12 for last year; 14 were serious compared to 29 for last year, and 488 were minor compared to 658 for the same period last year.
