So, since July 17th, there have been four gang related murders in the Belize District - and there is the constant threat of retaliation.
So what are the police doing about it? And does this escalation indicate that the vaunted Leadership Intervention Unit and its mitigation measures are failing?
And, with police now charging gang leaders for gang membership - are the cops desperate to get them off the street as a means of de-escalating the violence?
We asked the Commissioner today:
Chester Williams, Commissioner of Police
"Yes, we have been going after a few of those prominent figures who we believe are involved or may have had something to do with the recent spate of killings in the city. Again, we have to strike a balance in ensuring that we deal extremely tough with those persons who are adamant to create havoc in the city and at the same time we still need to continue work with those persons who are working with us in holding the peace and so while I know that there may be some critics in terms of the work of LIU and would like to make it seem - that is not the case and as I had discussed many times before that we don't expect that LIU is going to stop all crimes from occurring. Certainly, crime will occur from time to time and we will have to find a way to address it."
"You would know that as members of the media that when we do have these gang killings, it is extremely difficult to contain the retaliations and I think that when you compare our actions now compared to the past, you would see that the retaliations are much slower."
"And so, whenever we have these incidents, we certainly will respond in whatever way we can, lawfully, and do what needs to be done to address the issue. One lawful way in which we would normally do is to look at those persons who are involved in gang activity or are actively involved and then we go after them with gang legislation. It is either we apply the gang law or we do an SOE. I am sure that the latter would be preferable to some, but at the same time too, I also think that the former is more legally done and in terms of just going after specific persons, as opposed to declaring an entire area and then we go in there and operate. That gives some law-abiding citizens some discomfort that they don't like. So we just try to use the gang law, we just pick out who needs to be picked out and then we charge them."
