Man shot on Fabers Road; man shot on Dolphin Street; man shot on Sixth Street; man shot on King Street… “The good, the bad,” or the innocent. R.I.P. all!
Sun. June 19, 2022, Mon. June 20, 2022
If ever there was need for a serious “intelligence” body among our law enforcement agencies, the time is definitely now, when impunity has become the order of the day among coldblooded murderers in the streets of Belize City. Guns for hire, gang-related, or not; when a “gunman” can be so brazen and callous, seemingly with no fear of being held accountable, when taking another’s life in a public setting, we know we are in a very bad place indeed. Crime, poverty, lack of education, malnutrition, unemployment, corruption, unjust wealth distribution, inadequate health care … everything is related, and there are no easy answers or quick fix solutions. But we still need to be going forward in tackling the problems, rather than going around in circles. Why do we keep discarding good approaches and strategies, and refuse, as a people, to “grab the bull by the horns” and tackle the problems with focus and intensity? Is it, as Assad Shoman opined back in 2018 in Punta Gorda (Krem broadcast on Saturday evening), that we only became politically “independent” in 1981, but our Belizean mentality has not yet been “decolonized”?
While there can be debates on crime-fighting methods and intervention techniques to reduce the level of retaliation among the various gangs after each murder, there is this feeling among helpless and frustrated citizens that we’re fighting a losing battle, like trying to bail a badly leaking boat by a bucket in the stern area, while a big hole has water gushing in from the bow region.
We would be tempted to engage a discussion on the intelligence strategies in the interdiction side of crime fighting, and question the wisdom of dismantling the much maligned “SIS” (Security Intelligence Services) of a former UDP administration. There is a danger of any intelligence-gathering agency of government being manipulated for party political purposes; but that does not mean a great need does not exist to monitor and gather undercover information on these individuals who seem to be roaming our streets with utter disregard for the possible presence of undercover intelligence, which could surprise them when least expected, and at least give them one more thing to think about when making their move to end an innocent life. With an already terrorized citizenry, these guys often strike their targets in broad daylight, with full confidence that none of the apparently frightened onlookers may turn out to be an armed undercover agent. There are none such in Belize, it seems, thanks to the heavy politicizing in the PUP election campaign a few decades ago against the UDP-instituted SIS.
In the name of politics and political expediency, the Belizean people have over the years seen a number of good projects disbanded or derailed, only to see later attempts to resurrect them in a different form. At one time the campaign slogan was “Vat is a killer!” But after the election, the new party in government soon did a few modifications and came out instead with GST. One party in government tried to address the gang warfare problem with a Youth For The Future initiative, but this was soon scrapped by the incoming party in government in favor of a new thing called Conscious Youth Development Programme. Continuity and building of institutional knowledge remains a problem each time an initiative is discontinued due to politics, and then the new group has to start all over again. Perhaps the most egregious act due to political expediency was the dismantling of BELCAST (Belize College of Arts, Science and Technology) by the incoming UDP government in 1984 in favor of a new business-oriented UCB (University College of Belize), which was affiliated with an American university. If ever there was a destructively backward move for a young, developing country, that was it. Nurses Training School, Belize Teachers College and the renowned Technical College soon became casualties.
The Crimes Commission Report and Recommendations of 1992 during a PUP administration focused a lot of its attention on intervention strategies with gangs, interdiction efforts of the Police Department, and the judiciary; and while it did recommend the enactment of some social, educational and community programs as well as creating employment opportunities, the incoming UDP administration in 1993 saw the usual redirection of focus and the backburner status for that report. Subsequent efforts to draft detailed approaches and plans to try and bring escalating crime, especially murders, under control have been slow to bear fruit, despite different scientific studies and recommendations from foreign experts (Gayle and Crooks) and dedicated local visionaries. In June 2022, we are still plagued by execution-style murders, home invasions, burglaries and other economic crimes. It thus begs the question, is it that there is no political will, or have we been “barking up the wrong tree”?
One clue that our methods are not sufficient to arrest this problem, is evident from the mouth of the Commissioner of Police himself, when he responded to a suggestion from reporter Cherisse Halsall (7News) that some of his “… police officers may be involved with cartels?” Commissioner Williams retorted that “…we are dismissing police officers everyday.” From decades ago, we have been hearing of crooked cops confiscating drugs from individuals, to give to other individuals to sell on their behalf. We sympathize with the Commissioner, because, hard as they are to find, a “few good men” in the force could be more effective than a whole battalion of officers riddled with crooks.
A most unlikely source, the sports memoirs of American Peace Corps, Ted Cox, who was stationed in Belize between 1971 and 1973, and which was just published in 2014 under the title, “When British Honduras became Belize,” has unearthed some very interesting facts, including a report which, it now appears, provided a golden opportunity to chart a course that could have perhaps saved a whole generation of our youth lost to gun violence.
As Cox describes it, “In 1966 the United Nations, through UNICEF, embraced the concept of ‘responsible parenthood.’ … The U.N. expert, Vin Lawrence, arrived on September 13, 1972… Many organizations, social workers, citizens, youths and youth leaders collaborated on the preparation of his report … for three months.” The final report, “… a 180-page booklet entitled National Youth Programme: Youth in Belize – Moving Towards Development … was presented to the Ministry of Local Government, Community and Social Development.” Whatever became of that report?
Even before the advent of crack cocaine and gangs in Belize, and with no mention of police, “The study observed that large-scale unemployment tends to create an angry generation that often finds vandalism and violence the easiest ways to alleviate frustration.” And a couple of the study’s findings from way back in 1972 jump out at us: “The education system was unsuited to achieve the needs of the nation. It was geared too much towards academic goals, lacking in student preparation for social and economic development … There were inadequate vocational facilities … There was a lack of usable play fields …” And this was before BEC field was “developed” and the Barracks was “saved.” Moreover, the study did propose “a blueprint and overview of a national youth program through the year 2000.”
We’ve lost a whole lot of time along with a couple generations of our youth, all because the demands of the task at hand may not have been deemed politically expedient. But it’s never too late to start. It is time for some serious soul-searching and atonement on the part of our government leaders, both red and blue. Let us as Belizeans discard forever that “colonized mentality” and embark on some decisive action to save our youth, beginning with remodeling our whole education system “to achieve the needs of the nation.”