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And one of the openings our newsroom attended that both the Minister and the ComPol insisted is not a part of electioneering was the inauguration of the new police precinct in Dangriga Town. It's in the New Site area, which has seen a lot of development in the past few years, and was in need of its own police station. Courtney Menzies went south today and has this story.
The residents of New Site, Dangriga Town can sleep a little easier tonight knowing that they now have a precinct in their area. The new station was inaugurated today so those who live nearby can soon expect more regular street patrols.
And the Commissioner of Police explained that this developing town was in great need of another precinct since the main one is over 7 decades old.
Chester Williams, Commissioner of Police
"We do understand and appreciate the fact that the current police station downtown is not serving the needs of Dangriga people from a security standpoint the way we would like it to be one and more so, the people have outgrown that facility. That station has been there since 1950 and at that time, Dangriga, or the Stann Creek police district only had about 50 police officers. Now the Stann Creek police district has almost 200 police officers, so you have seen that they have outgrown that facility. And so the need to de-centralize is very important and it's in the spirit of de-centralization that we decided we needed a police station in Dangriga and again, the New Site area expanding so tremendously was chosen as the location to put the next police station."
Kareem Musa, Minister of Home Affairs
"I think priorities are placed based on the need and the New Site of Dangriga as you are aware has expanded greatly, some 3,000 residents, some 1,200 registered voters in this area so you can imagine it's about 3,000 population and that's certainly sounds an alarm that you need to have a percent in that area and so it is with great pride that I join with Mayor Mariano who has been behind this project for quite some time now, over a year ago he came to see me in Belmopan and had identified the building and of course we put our request in and we are able to open the Martin Garcia precinct here in the New Site area of Dangriga today."
But who exactly was Martin Garcia? He was an officer, dedicated to his job and loyal to his town, with a legacy that all Dangriga residents know, as Minister Musa explained.
Kareem Musa, Minister of Home Affairs
"He was an inspector of police, a very rich history as a police officer as you know, he is from the town of Dangriga and his passion was traffic and prosecutions and like his son in his remarks today, even the best of attorneys like Mr Sampson back then, when they had to face Mr Garcia in prosecution, they had a level of fear for Mr Garcia, so it speaks volumes to his character, to his integrity, to his service to the country so it was quite the privilege to meet his family today and to honor him with this station in the New Site area."
And it will only help the officers to step up their policing in Dangriga, especially since the Minister has already promised them new motorcycles.
Kareem Musa, Minister of Home Affairs
"As you know, whenever you establish a new precinct, you have to equip that office, not just with furniture, computers, that sort of thing, but with mobility and so the objective in the medium term, I would say within six months is to get a motor vehicle here assigned to this particular precinct, but in the meantime the officers need to be mobile, as the commissioner mentioned, 20 of the new recruits that will be passing out will be stationed here in Dangriga, and so those 20 officers have to have adequate mobility to in the meantime we will be assigning two new motorcycles to this precinct."
Chester Williams, Commissioner of Police
"I want to say that with all that have been done by the police officers here in Dangriga, we must stay on track in terms of what we're doing in Dangriga. The people need to be safe and it's our responsibility that we provide that level of security to them."
"We have increased number of police officers, we have put together other crime fighting strategies, we made some changes in terms of personnel because then we were seeing that many of the officers here were from Dangriga and they were not contributing to the crime fighting effort and so they had to be moved out and we brought in new people. We have a new OC and I must commend the current OC Mr Reyes for the job that he is doing along with the formation to ensure that crime continues to go down in Dangriga."
The building was donated by Imer Hernandez.
