And while Orange Walk saw violence over the weekend, certain sections of Belize City are currently under a state of emergency. The Minister of Police has said repeatedly that SOE's are a last resort only - and the PUP - when they were in opposition - criticized the UDP's constant use of them.
But now, this is the PUP's third SOE - and the second one due to gun violence. So are they following predictably in the footsteps of the previous administration? We asked the PM.
John Briceno, Prime Minister
"We have been trying to do different strategies and we have seen an improvement, if you want to be objective and look at the numbers, you will see that the murder rate has gone down and that has been done because of the intervention that we have been doing with the gang members but there are certain times when things flare up and, like, in school, you know somebody push you, you push back and it gets out of hand. Well, the same thing is happening with these gang members, the problem with this one is that it's a deadly one where they are killing one and another and there are instances where innocent people get killed and we have a responsibility to keep the peace and especially to protect innocent people so I believe that the minister in his mind felt with the advice of the commissioner and the professionals that the quickest way to stop that right now is to just do an SOE for certain areas, it's not all over the place, it's just certain areas and hold on to some of these guys so that they can calm down and ease up and afterwards talk to them and see how we can move forward. If you look at what has happened in El Salvador where President Bukele has imprisoned about 70,000 gang members, then the murder rate has gone down tremendously and the people are happy about it and I'm not suggesting for us to go down that road but I think that we need to make these guys understand that our government is serious and if they continue to behave lawlessly and then especially affecting the lives of innocent people, our government has to act."
