Now, you may ask how exactly did we get here? Belize has not been under a state of emergency since 2007 - and that one wasn't very serious - it was in preparation for a hurricane - and it was never really activated.
The last state of emergency to contain crime was activated in 1981 - with the Heads of Agreement riots - which were a very serious time of unrest and upheaval.
Thankfully, we're nowhere near that right now. But, the plans to declare these "public emergency zones" first came up in March of this year. That's when two innocent women were killed in a retaliatory murder - and it came after a four year old was killed earlier that month.
After a 26 hour span that saw five murders, the government made all kinds of changes, moving the police minister, bringing the BDF back unto the streets, and, later on, switching out the Southside commander, and the Commander of Operations.
But the Government also proposed to declare certain parts of the southside as "emergency areas" - with the specific purpose of locking up gang figures as a kind of preventative detention.
But, things cooled down - and the government never went ahead with it, until now. Acting Prime Minister Patrick Faber pulled the trigger based on advice of the Minister of National Security, and the Acting Commissioner.
Today, Saldivar said it was not a decision taken lightly:
Hon. John Saldivar, Minister of National Security
"With consultation with the acting prime minister we decided that this was the time to impose this state of emergency in these 2 specific areas. It's not a measure easily come to. It's not one that we would want to do and so we have tried all that we could to not reach this point, but as the acting commissioner has indicated we believe that we have now reach that point after many interventions, discussions - this has reached this point. I do believe we are at the point where we were in March, but we do not want to get back to that point and that is why we are pre-empting any activities of these criminal gangs by implementing it at this time."
DCP Chester Williams, AG. Commissioner
"We don't want to get to that point where women and children are being killed. You alluded to what took place in March. We have seen instances where house are being shot at again. When you shoot in a house, you don't know who your target is going to be. Are we supposed to continue to be reactive, or must we be proactive? What we are doing is to be more proactive in trying to prevent those things from occurring again, where women and children are being killed."
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