BELIZE CITY, Tues. May 19, 2015–Harry Noble, who has been working with the Police Department for the past 13 years to help develop its Wide Area Networks database, has informed our newspaper that the police now have access to immediate digital information on incidences of crime, with the recent completion of the roll-out to the districts. Benque Viejo del Carmen, Cayo, was the last police post to be connected to the digital network about a month and a half ago. What this means is that the police are able to instantaneously track crimes occurring across the country.

Noble told Amandala that all crimes are tracked in the database, but their challenge now is analyzing and disseminating the information.

“All the data is linked in. Whenever you go to any police station now, it’s all computer work. Everything is digitized,” he told us.

He told us that the Chief Executive Office in the Ministry of National Security has asked them to develop a webpage, where information would be readily accessible to the public. That webpage, he said, is currently being developed by the Central Information Technology Office (CITO) in Belmopan.

Detective Corporal Jose Tillett, who is the GIS technician in the Police Department’s IT Unit, staffed by 10 police officers and 10 civilians, told us that he has also been working with the unit for 13 years. He said that their data tracking system allows them to see what is happening on the ground and better enables them to make decisions, such as the deployment of more effective patrols, with particular emphasis on areas which need it the most.

He said that the system enables them to do crime analysis for the entire country.

Noble said that previously, the system was paper-based and it was difficult to track things and to hold people within the department accountable.

“With this technology, it allows us to follow up everything that is happening and be able to hold people accountable. You can track how many arrests have been made, how many convictions have been made and then we can ask people to improve,” Noble told Amandala.