There was a high level security meeting in Belmopan today.
The Ministry of National Security and the National Security Council, met with the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime and various friendly-nation ambassadors for a high Level Meeting on Intelligence, Strategic Analysis and Serious and Organized Crimes.
That's major considering that in the last week, five persons have been killed as a result of narco trafficking activities.
CEO in the Ministry of National Security, Major George Lovell explained that - with assistance from the UN - they hope to do no less than revamp the entire intelligence apparatus.
Here's how he explained it:..
Major George Lovell, CEO - Ministry of National Security
"129 homicides which the country has never seen in its history in my view is reasons for us to be alarmed and quite appropriately, we were alarmed. With the level of criminal activities that we witness in Belize City, the people that were involved in those type of activities are all reasons for us to have concern as a people. It is a reason for us to look at where we were 20 years ago, and where we were back in 2010 and clearly you would agree, that we as a people would believe that we were near a crisis situation. We couldn't continue along those lines. We have since the look at some of the areas that we needed to strengthen. Intelligence certainly was one of those areas."
"This morning, we had an opportunity to sit down in frank discussions and look at the whole aspect of our intelligence architecture and how best we can use a model that is suggested by the UNODC in order to enhance what currently exists."
"We have identified that there are weaknesses that exists in our structure and getting a model generally does not necessarily fits the weaknesses we have, even though it's good. What is more needed and we have agreed that we need to work towards - is to ensure that we have the right mix of people within our organizations. We need to have people who are competent; we need to have pragmatic people within our organization."
"It doesn't matter what model you have - what structure there is in place - if you don't have the right people with the right competency to do these things and you don't have pragmatic people in there you are not going to get the results that we so all expect."
"On the 23th of August, we have agreed that there will be a strategic plan session of government agencies and our partners that are represented here for us to look at some of the targeted assistance that are needed for us to address our national security concerns."
Lovell says all the partners present have committed to the plan. We'll follow up at that meeting in August.
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