In early July, the BDF were brought back unto the streets - after being taken off just three months earlier. It's not a decision that was lightly taken - and today the CEO who engineered their removal, says he hopes the soldiers can be removed from the urban jungle as quickly as they were brought back:..
Ret. Col. George Lovell, C.E.O., Ministry of National Security
"I was the one who after 23 years have caused the government to take the BDF off the streets and as you know in the May they came completely off the streets. I intend to keep it that way, but you have to understand that in the Ministry of National Security we have a responsibility to our citizens to ensure that we have citizen security and that it's maintained at a very high level. You will agree that the spike that we had certainly had threatened that and clearly there was a need for us to try and at least bring back some sense of security within the streets, and thus the reason for the B.D.F. to be sent out there."
"What I have said to both the commissioner of police and the Belize Defence Force, I do not wish for them to have this as a second phase of BDF going permanent in the street. What I want for them to do is to have a clear timeline as to when they will start and when they will complete so that we do not go into what I term as "missiontry." You will note that the numbers they have there are not the numbers that they use to have when they were out there on the so called permanent deployment in the streets. It is a small number, I don't wish to disclose those numbers at this time, but it's a much smaller number and it is for a specific short period of time to be determined by both the commissioner of police and the commandant of the Belize Defence Force."
The number of Police in eastern Division has been increased substantially in the last year - which is what allowed the BDF to go back to the jungles.
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