And keeping it on the cops, police officers have been complaining for years about damaged vehicles and equipment. Today, while it rained, some officers said they had no place to shelter, especially because their tents were in tattered disrepair. On top of that, they couldn't go into their vehicles since the windows are broken. We asked the ComPol if he's planning on addressing these issues sooner rather than later:
Chester Williams - Commissioner of Police
"We know that police have been complaining about resources it is not something that we are ignoring. You would know that we have said that we were looking at purchasing a number of vehicles for the police. The Ministry of Finance has approved the purchases of those vehicles but the difficulty we're having right now that the dealers in the country are not in possession of any vehicles and so the dealership that got the bit to bring in those vehicles for us are saying we will not be able to get them perhaps until the end of April. So, the fact we have not been able to inject that new fleet of vehicles in to our operation is not no fault of us or the government, it's simply that the dealers do not have and again based on what I am told that it goes back to the whole pandemic where these vehicle companies are not making as much vehicles are they are use to and so the quota for the different regions have been decreased and that is what is causing the setback. So, this means pretty soon we will be able to get those vehicles and inject them into Belize City and despite that, whenever we would see a dealer have 2 or 3 vehicles in country, we go and purchase them right away like for instance last week, we got 3 brand new vehicles for the police, one was sent to Corozal, one went to the Southern composite and the other one is for the Coastal Road composite because you see that the Coastal Road is now opening, we do anticipate that is going to be a road that criminals may use to traverse between the south and Belize City and so we're putting things in place to be able to avert that from happening."
But what about the tents? Well, the ComPol said that they might be getting rid of them altogether. Here's why:
Chester Williams
"In terms of the tents, again many of times these tents are damaged because the police don't take care of them and sometimes we don't understand that these things comes with a cost and we just neglect them and they get damaged but for me, the tents were put in place when we had the 12 hour shift system because it was extended hours of work, we no longer have the 12 hours, it now 8 hours and when we have situations where we have tents, we find that the officers stay under the tents too much instead of patrolling and things happen right around them and they don't see nothing. So, for me personally, I would love to see the tents removed completely and just have the police officers patrol and move around the area and that way we get better results as opposed to having them sit under a tent. So it is something we have to look at but whatever decision is made will be done in consultation with officers themselves and the commanders because truly, we don't want it to seem as if though we are not mindful of the condition of these officers, their welfare etc. but if we have the tent we would just like to ask that they do their patrol, they done do their patrol they come sit down for a 5 -10 minutes and then they go back and patrol again as opposed to staying under the tent 24/7 and I'm sure as you as the media if you were to do a study and you go around and you check these officers under the tent, you will see that all that they do is sit their on their phone and do not patrol the community and that does not help the neighborhood, it makes them insecure because the police is not doing their work."
