7 News Belize

Police Minister Says Media Sensationalizing Murders
posted (October 9, 2014)
50% of this intake is expected to go to the nation's crime hotspot, Belize City. That's about 65 new police on the ground, but despite ever more officers on the streets, Belize City residents still feel unsafe and that 2014 has been a violent year. We can't say for sure because the police department has stopped producing statistics.

Yet, still, The National Security Minister, who hadn't been granting interviews for some months now took an opportunity yesterday to publicly criticize the media, suggesting that press has been sensationalizing homicides, while taking them out of context.

Here's how he put it:

Hon. John Saldivar, Minister of National Security
"No one in the media is bothering to look at the numbers before declaring that crime is spiraling out of control. Yes, there are times when there are spikes in murders, which is a cycle which we all know. However a closer look at the numbers will tell you that the overall trend for 2014 is still far better than 2012 when we had 145 murders. Currently we have had 93 murders for 2014; only 5 more than the 88 we had up to the end of October last year and still 6 less than the 99 for the entire 2013 which is our best year in 5 years. Our projections for the rest of this year, keeping our fingers cross for success in the next 11 weeks is for our murder count to be well below the 2012 mark of 145; well below the 2011 mark of 124 and well below the 2010 mark of 129. This would mean that 2014 could very well still turn out to be the second best year in the last 5 years and still according to some the sky is falling down. The reality is that there is a tremendous of amount of work and investment that has been put into our security infrastructure since 2008 and especially over the last two years."

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