7 News Belize

La Isla Bonita Marches Against Crime
posted (April 30, 2010)
Ask just about anyone on San Pedro and they'll tell you that in the broad, national picture, their island town should qualify for special treatment because the tourists it attracts contributes disproportionately to the earnings for the country's number one foreign exchange earner, tourism. And in that same vein, those residents will also lament that instead of special treatment, they get too few police officers to guard their island treasure. Crime has been on the rise and that's why today no less than the UDP town council organized an anti-crime rally to voice their displeasure with the status quo and demand better. Janelle Chanona was there and she has this report.

Janelle Chanona Reporting
This morning, hundreds of San Pedrano students, their teachers and a handful of parents and supporters took to the main streets of the island to participate in an anti-crime rally.

Kadizah Jones, High School Student
"There's a lot of crime happening in San Pedro. There's fighting, shooting, killing. Just the other day a youth get stabbed just because he coming from work, right ma'm. And we no think the world should be like that. We want they increase the peace, silence the violence."

Concha Nunez, Owner, Sea Turtle Gift Shop
" When I was growing up, it wasn't like this. Now, fifty six years later it's getting worse and worse. We have to really do something to stop it."

Ron Siebert, San Pedro Resident
"It concerns me a little bit but nothing that I wasn't prepared for, moving from the United States to a Third World country. I kind of expected things like that…kind of stuff happens everywhere you go so it's nothing that I'm too worried about."

But organizer of today's event, San Pedro Mayor Elsa Paz, says many people are worried and they are prepared to take dramatic measures to curb crime. First on the list: screening visitors.

Elsa Paz, Mayor, San Pedro Town
"It's not stopping anyone from coming to the island but it's just to have checkpoints. There's a lot of bad elements that come from the mainland just to come commit crime here on the island and I believe if we have a manifest from the water taxis just as we do from the airlines I believe that will work very good. We need more security on those water taxis just to have like a check point, checking who is coming to the island."

Janelle Chanona
"But how do you ensure that doesn't lead to racial profiling?"

Elsa Paz
"Well I know that our police officers know the bad elements. As you know, all over the country of Belize most of the criminal elements are repeated criminals."

While the police agree that some visitors come with bad intentions, Deputy Officer Commanding for the San Pedro Formation, Ernel Dominguez, says unsupervised children often become juvenile offenders.

Ernel Dominguez, Deputy Officer Commanding, San Pedro Formation
"Many of the incidents of reports of crime we have had, during our investigation, most of our investigation we have found out that young people are involved and one of the thing we have looked at a lot is because of them having poor supervision in the home so they are out on the street and are being peer pressured by others."

Janelle Chanona (Stand-Up)
"More than ninety percent of San Pedro's economy is made up of tourism related activities. Islanders say the more crime goes up, the less visitors come to the island."

Major crime on the island ranges from petty theft to burglaries to stabbings and murders. While the statistics here may pale in comparison to Belize City, San Pedranos say the idea is to break the cycle of violence before it spirals out of control. And their solution to controlling the youth population is a curfew.

Janelle Chanona
"The logic of that is that there are too many young people out all hours of the night?"

Gustavo Ellis, Dean, San Pedro Junior College
"Definitely. And I think it has to do with the culture of San Pedro. Parents work and so they probably do not have chance to supervise their children so they might be working at nine, ten o'clock and the children are doing anything they want."

Janelle Chanona,
"So how do you address that family structure?"

Gustavo Ellis, Dean, San Pedro Junior College
"It has to start with the school, the future parents because the generation that is now, you can't bend an old tree so the students need to realize that the only way San Pedro can progress is education, studies, responsible and be accountable for their actions."

Janelle Chanona
"So you would agree with a curfew?"

Mariella Graniel, San Pedro Resident
"Sure, that helps a lot. It has happened several times. It helps a lot."

Kadizha Jones, High Schooler
"At first we felt a way about the curfew because we thought that they were trying to restrict our freedom but now we see that they are trying to make a change for us and we don't feel any way about it."

"Youths are creating this because they feel like they don't have no future so the community centres for youths…give them something to do when in their spare time. Some youths are not going to school because their families can't afford it so they turn to other things like violence."

Minister of Tourism and Area Representative Manuel Heredia agrees.

Manuel Heredia, Minister of Tourism
"San Pedro being one of the bigger municipalities has barely anything for young people can get involved. In other areas you have Youth for the Future, different organizations…not on the island. The reason being that San Pedro forms part of the Belize district and what I have seen from experience, not now only with a Government, but even before, that anything that comes for the Belize District, San Pedro will never be part of it. It is time now, and I believe now being a part of Government, that I have to request a lot more that these activities involve the island also."

Less dramatic proposals include the launch of additional neighbourhood watch programs. There are currently 12 active groups on the island.

Jan Brown, Neighbourhood Watch Organizer
"I had two home invasions, while I was sleeping, in one month and it just frightened me beyond means so I got my neighbourhood together along with some other people that had already said we want to do this and we came together and since October of last year since we started our guard system of seven nights a week, we have only had one home break in."

Janelle Chanona
"Organizers of today's anti-crime rally admit that some of their ideas are extreme but they say that's only because they want to send a strong message to the criminal element that they are serious about positive change in their community. Reporting from San Pedro, I am Janelle Chanona for 7News."

There are an estimated 22,000 people living in San Pedro town. There are currently 19 officers stationed on the island to assist in crime fighting initiatives.

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