Police officers from Precinct 2 in Belize City, were today in Lake Independence on a cleanup campaign to help residents living on Jasmine Street.
It's community policing initiative - to try and help residents meet their community needs. Today, they took on the task of trying to clean up an abandoned lot and building which has become a dump site and an eyesore.
The residents say that this unsanitary mess has been plaguing them for years, and so, they were eager for the help from the police.:
Sgt. Brent Hamilton - Commander, Community Policing Precinct 2
"We try to meet with the people of the community. What we are witnessing here today is one of our programs that is mandated by us. We go out and we talk to the residents of the community and they sometimes suggest certain things to us and we look at it. This property you see here at the corner of Poinsettia and Jasmine Street, is a property that is abandoned a long time ago. And we have several incidents that happened around the property. So, as a result of that we decide to team up with City Council, Community Policing officers from Precinct 2 and we decide to do something today, to try to assist the residents of this neighborhood here."
Daniel Ortiz
"How often do you guys, after identifying an area, take over and decide to go in and help?"
Sgt. Brent Hamilton - Commander, Community Policing Precinct 2
"I try to do it every month. Sometimes the resources and the logistics of it, sometimes can be very overwhelming, but as soon as we can get everybody on board or who we team up with, we get it done."
Daniel Ortiz
"Is there that fear from you that, right now its election season, City Council may be jumping on the bandwagon to work with a program that you already have going for some time now."
Sgt. Brent Hamilton - Commander, Community Policing Precinct 2
"Well, I don't see it that way. If the community is paying attention, the police department always trying to do something positive for the community and so I don't see it as that. I am doing my work, that's the work that I do and I am not looking at the time that is now that is election or city council. I am going to do my work regardless if there is an election or not."
Celia Neal - Area Resident, Jasmine Street
"We glad that somebody is trying to do something about here, because this place here is a problem. This place wasn't like this. If a dog die, they throw it here, a cat die, they throw it here. This area would want to be an area where the gangs would want to try take over, but due to the police being here and have it under surveillance, we don't have that heavy gang violence here. One and two little things happen and so, but if they weren't around, maybe it would be more and everybody looks out for everybody here."
Police from Precinct 2 intend at some point to set up a sting to catch persons in the area in the act of dumping garbage on this abandoned lot.
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