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COMPOL Proposes Progressive New Approach For Domestic Violence
posted (January 31, 2019)

When he took office earlier this month, the new Commissioner of Police prioritized domestic violence as one of the leading causes of murder - right up there with gang violence.  

Well, yesterday, at the City Council’s Domestic Violence Conference, he discussed concrete ways he plans to reduce death and injury by domestic violence.

The first is not allowing women who make a complaint to have the charge dropped by saying they don’t want court action:

Chester Williams - Commissioner of Police
"Often time’s victims of domestic violence come to the police and they give their statement and when they are finished, officer I don't want no court action I just want you talk to the man. But why don't you want no court action and just talk to the man, this the 4th, 5th or 6th time the man is beating you but you still only want the man to be spoken to. The first time he did it, he was spoken to. Did he stop? No. The second time he did it, he was spoken to. Did he stop? No. The third time he did it, he was spoken to, still no stop. When are you going to decide that enough is enough? When you are going to accept the reality that the man no wa change. When are you going to accept the reality that if you continue to live in that lifestyle, the next place that you will find yourself will be the cemetery or the hospital. So my instruction to my officers now and we're currently working on a domestic violence protocol that will be distributed to every police station across the country, that once a complainant comes in with a domestic violence complaint, we are not going to ask you if you want court action. The mere fact you come to the police is because you want court action."

Williams also plans to make it so that protection orders from the court don’t rely on the woman who asked for the order to defend it in court:

Chester Williams
"When you go to court and the court issues a protection order. Yes you are the one who goes to the court and apply for the protection order and the court grants you that protection order. Now once the court grants an order, it is an order from the court, not an order from you who went to apply at the court. So then, when the perpetrator breaches that protection order, I don't think that we should rely on the testimony of the woman to go before the court and said the man breach it. Once we have evidence to show that one, the man was seen with the woman, two he was seen near her home that is sufficient for us the police to be the complainant to show the court that the man has breached the order of the court."

And, most significantly, Williams says he wants to change the setting where domestic violence reports are made:

Chester Williams
"We believe that the location and the setting of domestic violence unit in Belize City is inadequate. We believe that it needs to be moved to an independent location away from the police station. So we are contemplating to remove domestic violence unit from the police station and we are going to rent a nice suitable building somewhere and inside that building we are not going to do business as usual. There is a model in Jamaica, center for the investigation of domestic violence and child abuse. It is a state of the art place in a Jamaica that deals with issues of domestic violence and child abuse. We are trying to see how we can replicate that in Belize. So when we have the center, within the center itself we're going to have an in house gynecologist, so when you have cases of sexual assault, instead of having to taking them from the police to the hospital and everybody look on the woman because every time they see a woman with police at hospital, they know it's rape or some form of sexual assault. So instead of going to the hospital now to be examined, you have the in-house gynecologist that will do the examination of women who are victims of sexual assault or rape."

Williams says he hopes to have that new Domestic Violence Unit up and running by the end of March, 2019.  

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