Dear Editor,
Let me start by congratulating Mr. Fitzroy Yearwood on the difficult job he has as police press officer, however, I write to set the record straight as to his latest buzzwords on behalf of the police when another Belizean youth is massacred on the Southside streets of Belize City, and he passes it off as being merely gang-related.
While I understand what he means when he categorized these murders as gang-related, the truth of the matter is that these series of murders are more than that. First and foremost, it represents the country’s biggest breakdown in law and order since our Independence, but most of all it represents our country’s lack of leadership to truly tackle the crime problem and reduce the rate of murder.
What these killings represent is the street passing out its own kind of justice on alleged killers who have gotten away from Belize high courts, and even more dangerous is the killing off of witnesses and informants in various murder cases in Belize.
By passing these murders off as merely gang-related, what it does is to continue to erode our sensitivity to our responsibility, to our streets, and allow us to distance ourselves from the harsh reality that we have produced a generation of killers and that we have done little to solve our crime problem, much less reduce the murder rate.
I refuse to accept that we cannot reduce the rate of murder in Belize City streets; this is not even quarter of the problem faced in south central Los Angeles (Compton) when the state of California had to deal with the Crips and the Bloods, but the difference here is that Belize is too politically divided and our leader’s egos sometimes stand in their way of being listeners and doers of the logical solutions to our problems.
The fact of the matter is that we cannot be serious about crime and our murder rate when more than thirty thousand youths are locked out of the school system after leaving standard six. Is the state then contributing to crime?
The question is, what would these youths be had they been educated? We are contributing to our own demise when we refuse to expand the free text book program that would ensure that more students enroll in school. We can’t be serious about crime or about reducing the murder rate, when the conviction rate for murder is only seven percent and witness protection is nothing more than a horrible joke, and intimidation of witness is a life and death situation.
Belize has had three major crime reports since our independence, with logical solutions to our problems. I believe both successive governments have done some good to combat crime, but not enough, and you just cannot legislate yourself out of the crime situation.
For example, where is the promised state-of-the-art forensic lab, Mr. Big man? What have we done lately to strengthen the DPP’s office for a 90% conviction rate for murders? What have we done to strengthen the police gathering of evidence? When will we remove our soldiers off the streets?
Yet, we spend millions on the BDF patrolling our streets as a kind of “Latinization” of Belize, while compromising our much needed border patrols.
You’ve got to win hearts and minds and that starts with an education. These killing sprees can be reduced, the gangs can be broken up, and crime reduced, but as long as we remain too politically divided, including the church, the unions and the NGO’s, we are not going to fix it, and when another youth gets killed and it is reported as another gang-related incident, all it means is that Belize has failed to listen and learn, and its high murder rate continues.
Yours Sincerely,
Darrell Carter
VP Crimes Commission Report ’92