This afternoon at 3:00 a meeting was held in the conference room at the Police Eastern Division headquarters. About forty-five young men, pulled in by police from over the city, were present, along with Assistant Superintendent of Police Chester Williams, Superintendent of Police Crispin Jeffries, and other police brass.
At the end of the two-hour meeting, not much appeared to have been really achieved. Jeffries, who chaired the meeting, said that it was not a “peace-treaty” meeting, that he had the men there because either they knew of the recent shootings and murders, or that their behavior was influencing the behaviors and attitudes of the young men, ages 13-16, who are now seen as the accused in most of those cases.
Jeffries told the supposed gang leaders that at the end of the day the only thing that will be achieved from the “gangbanging,” which is what is causing these murders, is that the players are either already dead or will be dead eventually.
Jeffries pointed out some men, telling them that he knew about them and what they were doing, and that he had been talking with them for a long time. Some acknowledged what he said.
Jeffries said that he knew who had AK’s (high-powered rifles) and who were selling marijuana. A 16-year-old teenager was the youngest there. He was there, said Jeffries, because he had knowledge of the recent murders on the Southside.
Four of the detained men are self-employed, and said that they had to close down shop to be there.
“Police need to show respect, to get respect”, said one young man. If they continue taking advantage of the “young men in the streets,” and continue to do it in front of their young children, then that will only get them, the children, involved in the same game, he said.
Another man told police to stop calling him “Kingpin,” because he is a businessman in tourism, and has twenty workers employed with him.
Today was embarrassing for him when police came with their big guns for him, he added.
One man asked what the police had in place for these youths who are selling marijuana. Jeffries said that there was money to start any project and that, moreover, the men needed to learn to help themselves.
Raymond “Killa” Gentle, who resides on Kraal Road, said that he is angry over the fact that he and some of his friends from the neighborhood went to the Karl Heusner Memorial Hospital (KHMH) in two vehicles to see his friend, Ian “Horse” Reid, today, but when they exited the hospital they were accosted by about four vehicle-loads of policemen, who took them to the station, forcing them to leave one of their vehicles in the parking lot.
When he got to the station, he requested that an officer put his money in the police’s care downstairs, and he was punched in the mouth for that, said Gentle.
The meeting ended without any apparent solution when Jeffries walked out after being told by one of the participants to let someone else talk, because he was not talking anything sensible. Before, one youth, who is also from Kraal Road, said that the politicians need to provide jobs, which would alleviate the crime situation in Belize.