Still, admittedly, 2022 isn't off to a great start in terms of crime. There have been almost 20 murders in the first month and a half and minors haven't been spared either. But rather than announce new crime fighting techniques that the police department will be employing, Minister Musa ascribed this bad start to the unpredictability of crime.
It's a much different sentiment than in past interviews, where - while he never claimed he could stop all crime - he gave a much more confident response. Today, he said, it's kind of like the weather, and - we assume - that makes him and Chester - tossed about like skiffs caught in a small craft warning:
Hon. Kareem Musa, Minister of Home Affairs and New Growth Industries
"Throughout the course of the year, and I always say this, crime will see it's flares ups in particular months, I think last year it was the month of May which saw 19 murders, so it just goes to show you that you cannot predict, it's just like the weather it's very unpredictable to say where it is going to start next and as you know once one murder happens, there is a series of retaliations that ensue from there, thankfully we haven't seen that much retaliations in Belize City but rather a lot of the 13 murders that happened in the month of January were across the country, not just in Belize City, I think 6 or 7 out of the 13 were Belize city and so there wasn't that series of retaliations that we had expected thankfully, we're hoping to keep it that way but like I said, crime is just as unpredictable as the weather but the police department has to keep up it's hard work in terms of gathering the intelligence, carrying out very comprehensive investigations and making sure we find those individuals responsible for carrying out these acts of violence and bringing them to justice so that really is the focus of the police department. I know that a lot of times, more is expected from police but at the end of the day, police officers and the commissioner of police are not the ones that are instructing people to kill one another, they're just there to ensure that they can investigate it properly and bring those criminals to justice."
