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Today, Ladyville Police Station, which has jurisdiction over all the rural areas in the Belize River Valley, celebrated the graduation of 40 primary schoolers from the Sinai 7th Day Adventist School in Ladyville. 7News stopped by and spoke with the Rural Executive Officer about their very first batch of graduates:

ASP Chris Noble - Rural Executive Officer
"Our officers have been trained in GREAT. It's a program 14 years in the making, but it is the first time that it is actually happening in rural Belize. The entire rural Belize has never seen it. It is spearheaded by a constable WPC Carla Smith and she after doing training has selected this school. I hope that it is the first of many because we are encouraging everybody else to come onboard with us and we want to go into more schools, we want to look at more education. We want to look at more kids because we don't want anybody else on the streets."

Daniel Ortiz
"As an advocate for the intervention into young person's lives before they get into this gang or street life, how important do you think it is for police to present themselves to the young ones at that early age to develop that relationship?"

ASP Chris Noble - Rural Executive Officer
"Definitely it is very positive. It is something that we want to look at to get kids away from this horror that the police are the bad people or I will call the police if something happens. So definitely it is a good thing for us, it is good for interaction. Our efforts are very much community policing oriented, so we are driving at this and we are not going to give up, we are not going to quit and this is just the beginning. Again I ask the other schools to invite us to come in. We will come and we will make ourselves available to you and we will come in the school and give any assistance that can be given."