Police recruit intake number 85 – they’ve gotten plenty of news coverage already – when their time at the training academy was interrupted by reports of spirit possession among the female recruits. That bizarre event forced the senior command to send home many of those 16 females. But, they regrouped and the training continued. And so, on Friday, with a every memorable stint at the academy behind them, the 90 recruits passed out at the Police Training Academy Grounds in Belmopan. Director of Training, Senior Superintendent Chester Williams said that this intake was the first to receive training in conflict resolution, stress management and the constitution.
Sr. Supt. Chester Williams,
“Subjects such as intro to criminal justice and it is important for the police to know what role police officers must play in the administration of justice in our country. Without having them know what role they must play then it begs you to wonder how will they effective in terms of performing their duties out in the street. Likewise to look at stress management, as police officers we go through stress on a daily basis, sometimes stress comes contributed by the job and some off the job. We as human beings need to be able to understand how to cope with stress, how to deal with stress and how to get over stress and hence the reason why I introduced that subject area. Then we looked at conflict resolution, you know the police deal with conflict on a daily basis, regardless of whatever the conflict may be. We also have what is called inner conflict that we also must know to deal with because if we don’t know to deal with our conflict then how can we deal with the conflicts of others so looking at that again, we decided to introduce conflict resolution and social psychology again is very important as a part of policing. It is good for the police to know how the community operates, what to looking for from society and that in itself will make the police more efficient, more effective in performing their duties. We also look at community policing, comprehensive course in community policing, and then we also looked at public relations and customer care. Often times you hear the community complain that the police are hagging them up and we need to change that culture. We need to start to see how we could teach our officers to be more receptive to people, to learn to treat people more humanely because even need people to treat us humanly but we must understand that respect goes both ways and in order for the public to respect us, we must respect ourselves and respect them likewise. We also looked at the constitution. This recruit squad had a comprehensive constitutional course which was taught by Miss Sharon Frazer, the Magistrate in Belize City, and again as police officers we must know what are the constitutional rights of people, that is the only way we will not be able to violate their rights and one of the things we have been looking at over the past few years is that police officers upon detention of persons, continuously infringe on person’s constitutional rights and as a result of that have caused many good cases to go down in the court.”
Overall top honors and valedictorian went to RPC #1138 R-Jay Gilharry. Gilharry also received first place in the written examination.
