This morning at the Dream Valley Resort in Teakettle. Police Commanders from each district participated in a strategic planning workshop that focused on key areas like physical fitness, mental resilience and dedicated service. Here are highlights:
Oscar Mira, Minister of Home Affairs
"A training is the tool that keeps an officer ready, not only to enforce the law but to make sound decisions in stressful and high pressure moments. Whether responding to violent crime, conducting interviews or executing search warrants or managing public order, officers must be equipped with up to date knowledge and skills, therefore effective training improves outcomes and when outcomes improve we gain public trust. That trust is a pillar of policing without it no department can succeed. And this is why training is not optional it is essential, it is a foundation on which professionalism, legitimacy and effective policing are built and as we strengthen the Belize police department, we must treat training as a core pillar just as important as operations, intelligence investigations and administrations, training is a pillar that we must continue to strengthen."
Bart Jones, Deputy Commissioner of Police
"This initiative speaks directly to continued professional growth and institutional strengthening for the Belize police department. Today we gather not only to plan but also to reaffirm our commitment to excellence, modernization and serving the Belizean people with integrity, competence and a sense of vision and purpose. The environment in which we are policing is rapidly changing and we can see that there is more on social media and the whole atmosphere of crime is changing, you have cyber crime which is borderless and you have transnational organized crime so just to give an idea that we are changing. Belizean society is evolving, crime trends are shifting and public expectations are right increasing."
"This workshop is a step forward institutionalizing that culture, a culture where planning, evaluation and accountability guide how we train and how we perform."
