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Earlier in the news, you saw Deputy Police Commissioner Chester Williams speaking on a number of important police cases making the news.

We met him and other officers from Belize City while out on a meet and greet session with residents of Jasmine Street, and surrounding areas.

That's the heart of the St. Martins area of the Southside, which can be a war zone - though, thankfully, violence is on a downswing right now. 

The Operations Commander told us that police have to keep focus in this part of the city, if they want to keep things calm here:

DCP Chester Williams - Commander of Operations
"We are here and we are doing meet and greet in the St. Martin Depores Area, we're concentrating in the area of PIV which is from Oleander Street all the way to Tibruce Street and there is no specific reason why we're in this area but just to go back and touch base with the residence, to ensure that we can get their feedback as it relates to the work the police have been doing in the area. Since our reconfiguration of our operations we have not been in this particular area so we believe that it is only prudent we come back to the area and talk to the residence to see how the reconfiguration has been working and we wanted to know in terms of the visibility of police in the area and what the police had been doing over the past couple of months and I must say that we have been getting some positive feedback in terms of residence are happy that they are seeing more of the police now and from a police standpoint we know that we have been doing a lot in terms of stop and search operations, going after persons who are wanted for different crimes and things that we know must be done with a view to prevent crime from occurring. So I must commend the officers who are within this area on a daily basis as well for the good work that they continue to do."

"We know the St. Martins area can be very challenging to police and we would know that when tensions are high in this area, you average sometimes a murder a day and we have been doing our best over the past couple of months to try to calm things down within this area and as a part of our operation reconfiguration we have assigned the St. Martin's area to the special patrol unit so if you'd notice that all the patrols in the St. Martins are from the special patrol unit and the reason we put them in this area is because we want to be able to take a grip of the situation that we expect that they be out policing the area more aggressively and when I say aggressively I don't mean brutal but in the sense aggressive in the sense that they will be ensuring that our operation objectives are met on a daily basis."

Our records say that the last murder to take place in the St. Martin's area was the random ruthless killing of mechanic Daniel Guardado, a working man gunned down due to mistaken identity.