So we got to talk to the police bosses today in San Ignacio and Santa Elena when police received three brand new vehicles.
It's a major boost for the community - which has had a rough 2022, plagued by murders, robberies and even a hospital invasion at the San Ignacio Hospital.
And one of the reasons criminals have been able to prey on the innocent is because police didn't have enough vehicles to maintain active patrols.
But now, with these three additional pickups - they have five patrol mobiles. The Compol says that the public should now be seeing an increase in police presence:
Chester Williams, Commissioner of Police
"Basically as you would know that over the past month or so the twin town of San Ignacio and Santa Elena has been on the radar in terms of the increase in criminal activities and we have had several meetings within the area I attended some of those meetings and I also had assistant commissioner of police Gillet attend some meetings with community members and those meetings were to discuss with the people of the twin towns to see what we can be able to assist in making the area much safer and we got a lot of feedback from people and again it goes as part of our policing strategic plan where we consult with the people to be able to see how we can find solutions to the crime problem and so from out of those meetings we had I went back to minister our minister and ten government to see what we can do to allay some of the concerns of the people and through that we were able to get the donation of these vehicles. The San Ignacio police formation will be getting new vehicles and then we also have one that will be going to Ladyville police sub formation. We also anticipate that within the next couple of weeks perhaps by 1 August we will be having the opening of the new Santa Elena police station. Again to make sure that we can de centralize our policing efforts in this area. The San Ignacio police station is not adequate enough to be able to provide the level of policing that we will need for the people of the twin towns and the surrounding villages and so decentralizing is important at this time. You heard minister say that they are also working on the substation for Kontiki a very fast growing community. And so again the need for policing is extremely high and we need to see what we can do to grow the police department to meet the policing needs of the country."
The new vehicles are valued at 67 thousand dollars each.
