And those crimes are symptomatic of a crime uptick in the Cayo District.
This was discussed today in 2021's first quarterly COMPSTAT meeting. It's a meeting that brings together police commanders for a review and briefing on the crime stats of the first four months of the year.
And while Commissioner of Police Chester Williams was able to celebrate an overall decrease in crime, he was forced to make note of a new type of crime, home invasions, as well as a rising trend of homicides in the west. Here's his take on the successes and failures of the police department's first quarter.
Chester Williams - Commissioner of Police "Our overall crime outlook for 2021 first quarter is far better than the overall outlook we have had all the way back to 2015. Every category of crime is down in every region. I think the only region that has an increase in murders so far this year is the western region. And most of those murderers occurred in the Belmopan area. As you would know the year began we had a number of murders in surrounding areas of Belmopan. And so the Western region is up in murders but the reduction we saw is eastern division in the western region and in the northern region was greater than the increase in Belmopan and so we do have a significant decrease overall in the murder count. Likewise in terms of robberies and home invasions, those are down as well. I think the only category of crime that we have that is up is that of rape and by a very slim number. The over number of major crime reduction is somewhere around 28% compared to the same period last year. Murders are down compared to last year by 30% or more than 30%, so we're doing well in those areas of crime but again we want to emphasize to our commanders that this is no time to be tweaking our horns but rather to ensure that we continue to do what we have been doing or even do better with a view to see how we can continue to take crime down. We understand that we are policing in challenging times, where number of persons have lost their jobs and where there is major unemployment, that would also attribute to increase in crime and so we want to do what we can to keep this country as safe as we possibly can."
