After weeks of gang violence spiralling out of control in the city - the PUP government today launched its first southside state of emergency. Now, clearly, this is not a decision taken lightly, after all, it is a move straight out of the UDP playbook - and was one of that party's major tools for crime suppression - a tool which the PUP - while in opposition generously criticised.
But, here they are - now in Government - and finding themselves in the very same problem as the UDP - contending with the wicked problem called gang warfare.
So, they have returned to the only known solution for suppressing crime in the short term - a state of emergency.
The proclamation was signed by the by the Governor General yesterday and went into effect as the clock struck 12:00 last night - and began around 2:00 with police teams swarming the southside and raiding the homes of gang leaders.
The SOE is in effect across 10 areas of Belize City - and basically encompasses everything from Lake I Boulevard to the Port Loyola Area and including right up to Albert street - excluding only the downtown area.
The Commissioner of Police - who believes in the state of emergencies as an effective tool - had been pressing the political directorate to activate it for months. And he finally got his wish. He addressed the media on it an hour ago:
Chester Williams - Commissioner of Police
"We saw that particularly over the weekend that went, that the shootings were increasing, especially in the Antelope Street extension area where there seems to be an intense feud over the sale of drugs between 2 rivalling groups as well as the Mayflower area. As you all know that feud in that area has been going on for quite some time and it has caused a number of life and again, we saw over the weekend where a teenagers went into the home of Joseph Panting and could have executed 3 persons. So we have seen a number of reckless shootings from these gang figures and so with that I make recommendations to our minister to institute a state of emergency because we have been unable to remove these people off the streets due to non-cooperation on the part of victims and witnesses and so the minister and the cabinet agreed that in order to arrest the situation concerning the fact that we're not getting cooperation to arrest and charge that the best option is to institute the state of emergency. You would know that this government is very slow to use that method and our minister had said before that the state of emergency will always be a measure of last resort when all else fails. I can tell you as well that Mr. Rosado and Mr. Dawson from the prison, Mr. Nunez from the behaviour modification center, Mr. Cadle and a number of other interventions have been extremely busy doing interventions with these different factions but talking seemingly is not working, they are adamant about avenging whatever may have occurred and so with that this morning we went into operation, we had elements of the specialized units within the police department and officers from eastern division and we also had members of Belize Defence Force with us and we executed the state of emergency operation by picking up a total of 24 persons. Those persons are currently in custody, they will be processed and sent to prison."
We'll have more form the Commissioner's late evening interview later on in the news.
