_{Photo: (l-r) Mrs. Sandra Bowden, ACP; Dr. Richard Rosado, DCP., Commander Admin; Commissioner of Police, Chester Williams; Hon. Kareem Musa, Minister of Home Affairs & New Growth; and Bart Jones, DCP.}

by Charles Gladden

BELMOPAN, Fri. Oct. 4, 2024

The Belize Police Department has released its crime statistics for the third quarter of this year, which have revealed a slight uptick in the number of murders in that period, compared to last year’s numbers.

This Friday, October 4, the Belize Police Department displayed its computer statistics or CompStats (shortened word), which is data compiled by the department to measure the crime trends and to enable a closer look at the number of crimes that have occurred in particular sections of the country.

According to that data, the number of murders in the third quarter of this year has risen by 3—going from 68 during the same period last year to 71 in 2024.

“We finished the month of September with three murders above last year’s figure around the same time. My objective is for us to work our butts for the rest of this year to defeat the number for last year which was 87; so, in other words we are [at] 71 murders right now [which] puts us at 16 below last year … I also outlined to them strategies that I want us to do to ensure that we would be in a position to defeat the numbers,” said Commissioner of Police, Chester Williams.

The ComPol highlighted several strategies to be taken by the different regional commanders to address the crime situation, one of them being interventions between rivaling gang groups before there is an escalation to violence.

“We need to be more proactive in terms of our approach. We don’t want to respond. I even said to them, that if they hear that there is an issue between two different gang groups, we must step in, do an intervention, do mediation, get LIU involved, get Mister Nuri [Muhammad] involved. Let’s see so we can stem that before it reaches a stage where somebody gets killed; because once somebody gets killed, the problem becomes greater, [and] the other side wants to retaliate. We must do what we can to avoid getting to that stage,” he mentioned.

Minister of Home Affairs, Hon. Kareem Musa, told reporters that reducing crime has been a challenge, but since 2020 it has been decreasing.

“We have seen a substantial decline since 2020, each year going lower and lower; and of course, we always want to do better than the previous year. So that is what we aim for in the last quarter of the year,” he said. “I know that a lot of the murders that took place in 2024 have been domestic, and so, we have to find a way to work along with members of the public in terms of creating greater awareness of domestic situations. Because I think that is certainly inflating the numbers this year,” Minister Musa added.

While there is a slight increase in murders, other major crimes have seen a decrease compared to last year: the number of robberies has decreased by 28; there were 118 such incidents compared to 146 listed in last year’s data. Additionally, burglaries saw a major reduction of 113, from 540 to 427; and incidents of theft decreased from 128 to 111.