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145 new police officers have joined the ranks of the department after squad 96 passed out today. The numbers at the BPD have been fluctuating since while they have been recruiting new cops, the bad ones are being weeded out and dismissed. But they also have to contend with officers resigning, retiring, or passing away.
The ComPol says they're trying to reach 2.6k cops in total, and with squad 96 and the upcoming squad 97, that may happen sooner than later. But until then, these 145 cops will be spread throughout the country in the areas that need it the most.
Chester Williams, Commissioner of Police
"We anticipate that with the injection of this new squad into our ranks, that we'll be able to cover more grounds in terms of providing citizen security to our people. They have been distributed across the country, the northern districts getting the majority of them followed by the west, the south, and the eastern region getting the least which is not normally the case. Again, we have seen that there is a call, a cry for police officers in different parts of the country, we have expanded in certain areas and this squad, as much as it will not give us the amount of officers we will need to carry out our expansion, it gives us that start that we need and we hope with that next squad, squad 97 we'll be able to carry out our expansion in its entirety."
"We are an involving department, we're in the process of transformation and that transformation certainly requires that we do things differently and those officers who are not able to keep up with the trend or where we want to go, then certainly we have to part ways with them but apart from dismissals, we do have a high attrition rate of resignation, persons retiring, persons going off medically unfit, etc, so the numbers are really hard to maintain, we're trying to reach at least 2,600 by the end of this year but I doubt we'll be able to achieve that. Squad 97 should be 250 so it's going to be bigger than this one and we believe with that squad, it will put us close to the 2,600 number that we're trying to reach at this time."
And like squad 95, this set of recruits were taught to put community policing and human rights policies at the forefront when dealing with the public. Today, the Minister of Home Affairs spoke about how they have changed the focus when training the officers.
Kareem Musa, Minister of Home Affairs
"Both squads, it is my hope and my expectation will be leaders within their precincts, whichever precincts they're posted to, we have revised the curriculum, we have revised the criteria for you to become a police officer and so far we have not had any complaints from squad 95 and we're looking forward to likewise exemplary performance from this particular squad. As you saw we even issued an award for human rights, success in their human rights course that they took and so there's a new revised curriculum that we're working with over the last two or three years with Dr Priscilla Brown as the dean of the academy and it is excellent performance so far and we look forward to greater things from both squad 95 and 96."
"It's not just about respecting human rights, it's about restoring the confidence and trust that the Belizean people have in the police department, that is a pillar that we have been working on since we came into office in 2020 and that is something that we continue to drive home because at the end of the day it's not limited to 2,200 police officers, there are 390,000 law abiding citizens who can help those 2,200 officers in the fight against crime so we have to work in tandem, we have to work hand in hand with the law abiding citizens of Belize and so that's a very important message because police officers cannot be everywhere all at once and that is where the law abiding citizens, the neighborhood watch groups come into play and they have that good trusting relationship with one another."
The PUP Committed in its manifesto to have 4,000 enlisted police officers.
