Women's month is about to close, and in recognition of it, the Police Department is taking a step to do away with the classification of "W" and "Woman" when referring to female police officers of all rank.
An internal memo, sent out last week Thursday, says, quote, "In keeping with international practices, and with the spirits of Belize's obligations in respect to international conventions on the treatment of women, the Commissioner of Police has decided that The "Woman" or "W" be removed as a prefix when referring to the rank of Female Police Officers." End quote.
This morning, we asked the Commissioner about the change, and he told us that his department is making an attempt to become more gender-sensitive:
Chester Williams - Commissioner of Police
"We had a meeting at the policy group from last year, and we had agreed from then that we were going to remove the 'W' from in front of the 'PC' where the women police officers are concerned. So again this year, with Women's Month being celebrated, with our minister, we discussed the matter again, and he was in full agreement with it. And so, we went ahead to do the removal of the 'W'. It is important because we don't want to have an organization, particularly one like the police department, where we're still referring to women police officers as 'W'. We want to refer to police officers as police officers. When it comes to men, we don't say "MPC" meaning male police officer. We say 'PC'. And the same should apply to women."
In order to ensure that the department can differentiate whether they are dealing with a male or female officer, the cop's entire name will be used on the relevant documents.
