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Cops Accountable
Fri, November 6, 2015
Today we met up with the southside police formation in the Jane Usher Boulevard Area. Now, they have been here time and time again - and we wanted to know if it's about profiling, or if it has a real purpose. Southside Commander Senior Superintendent Chester Williams told us they came for a report card:...

Sr. Supt Chester Williams - Commander, Eastern Division Southside
"We are also getting back from them our report card, in terms of whether or not they are satisfied with the work that we have been doing on the Southside Belize City and I must say that the feedback so far is that the residents are saying that comparing to when we first came to now, that they are seeing a downward trend in the criminal activities in this Jane Usher Boulevard area. One of the things that people have been saying is that what police use to do before was to when the crime go out of control, they step in the area, they calm it down and they step out back and then crime come back out of control again. But what we have been doing, we have done our best. Despite our human resource and vehicular constraint, we have tried our utmost best to ensure that we keep the pressure on and we maintain our presence. Because of the service that we offer to the members of the public, they are our customers and like with any business you want to be able to have accountability with those persons that you serve and we believe that where there is proper accountability, that in itself will allow us to function at a higher scale. So I am happy that we can use members of the public to be able to scrutinize the work that we do and if there is anything that we have done wrong, that they can hold us accountable for whatever it is that we are doing that we should not be doing or what we should be doing. It goes towards the confidence building measures, in terms of bridging the gap between us and the community."

"For far too long people have been complaining about the way how police work and how we believe that we can operate in a vacuum. We need to get out of that culture and recognize that policing is not done in a vacuum, but rather it is done better when we work more closely with the community."

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