Yesterday’s two murders – one in the morning and one in
the afternoon – coming the day after school-children were shot on the
way home – ends a very violent September. Today at a mini-press briefing,
Commissioner of Police Crispin Jeffries acknowledged that September saw a spike
in killings and he believes it is gang warfare.
Crispin Jeffries, Commissioner of Police
“We’ve seen some small increases in crime but not in any major
way. We are seeing a spike in murders over the last week and a half in September
and we have been responding and we’ve seen at least some clear-ups. And
when I saw clear-ups I mean that it is likely that we are going to arrest and
charge person or persons within the not too distant time.
We contribute the incidents to the ongoing rivalry among young persons.
We saw a spate of incidents that we knew would have had some rivalries. We stepped
up our responses by patrols, our intelligence, our intelligence team is meeting
as we speak in this room to look at other measures. The information that we’ve
been working with has died off and there have been some other incidents that
have begun.”
Jules Vasquez,
“Are you all overwhelmed or are you all responding effectively?”
Crispin Jeffries,
“I believe we are responding effectively to the incidents as they
occur. I would say the response in terms of time and speed is high but in terms
of being able to pre-empt, we are not getting the level of intelligence or information
that we need.”
Jules Vasquez,
“People feel that you’ve gone soft or that you strategies haven’t
effectively suppressed crime as people would have hoped your policies would
have.”
Crispin Jeffries,
“I would think that as I said to Mr. Ciego earlier yes. One would
have seen me in other modes of operation when it was my role and responsibility
to be upfront leading the charge. My responsibility now is to direct the charge,
direct others to be upfront and one would see Mr. Henderson, Mr. Blackett, Mr.
Grinage and other officers almost every time out there in front leading the
charge. How when it is necessary, I do join them but it is not my everyday responsibility
to be upfront. If one would think that I’ve gone soft, then they would
want to know the countless hours that I am spending everyday strategically deploying
resources, planning and executing plans to impact crime problems.”
So far for 2009, there have been 75 murders. But, guess what? Police
statistics say crime is down! You may shake your head at that one but the numbers
don’t lie. Or do they? Ask any resident of Belize City and they’ll
probably tell you that they feel more unsafe at the end of September than they
did in March.
But the figures up to yesterday show that there were 706 crimes in
March compared to only 600 up to the 28th of September. While those are all
crimes, major crimes in September were also down to 265 from 292 in August.
But, still. Children being shot on the street on their way home as gunmen target
and area’s “bad-man”? It sure doesn’t seem safe and
Jeffries addressed what the statistics say versus what the streets are saying.
Crispin Jeffries,
“We’ve seen increases in statistics for the month of September,
the total figures. The figures that I have given out are figures for the period
January to September 27th and those figures show 4% to 5% increase in robberies,
burglaries, and thefts. But these figures are 4%, 2%, 3% of the total. This
is what we’ve seen because of a cumulative amount from January to September.
The overall figure is showing some slight decrease particularly in murders,
rapes, and aggravated burglaries for the month of September itself. We’ve
seen small increases in robberies, thefts, and burglaries.”
Patrick Jones, LOVE FM
“Police can understand how difficult it will be for the rest of the community
to understand what you seem to be saying that as a matter of fact crime is going
down when that is not the case.”
Crispin Jeffries,
“I have very little other ways of explaining to the community that
we are doing our very best. We put our numbers out there, we analyze the crime,
we look at the patterns, and we respond proportionally to what the incidents
are and at the same time attempt to maintain safety in other areas. We see incidents
of violent crimes, murders, shootings occurring and we robberies but then there
is a wider part of the community that has a consistent police present for which
they can be assured that a presence will be there.”
According to police statistics, so far for 2009 crimes against property
– including such things as burglaries and car thefts far outnumber crimes
against the persons. 78% of all crimes reported for 2009 have been property
crimes and 22% have been crimes against the person.
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