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On Monday, Police arrested Franklin Manfredo Mendoza, a man wanted in his native Salvador as an "organized terrorist". Mendoza wasted no time after arriving in Bella Vista, a village in the Toledo district, before attempting to recruit gang members. 

Mendoza fled Salvador in the wake of a reported reduction in homicides that analyst Roberto Valencia, in an op-ed for the Washington Post, called an attempt by gangs to "calm territories and not invite further retaliation by the state.

It's a regional example that Belize could be seeking to emulate and yesterday Jules Vasquez asked the COMPOL about a possible shift in Belize's gang dynamic.

Jules Vasquez
"Do you feel there may be a change as well in the gang dynamic here in Belize?"

Chester Williams - Commissioner of Police
"Well, I would want to think so. We continue to look at the gang situation from a multi-faceted approach in the sense that it is not just about full-scale law enforcement but, we also try to engage C.Y.D.P. as much as we can to be able to deal with uprising, diffusing gang feuds and that is working for us. We are hoping that we can get on board with us, a gang interventionist slash mediator, and that person is going to work for the police and will coordinate with C.Y.D.P. to be able to deal with the different gang issues. And I will commend some of the young men who we know are involved in gang because the fact that C.Y.D.P is engaging them, their listening and it is paying off for us. We just need to find a way that we can continue to dialogue at the same time maintaining our tough stance because we cannot take gang issues as something trivial, it is something tough. So we have to have a tough approach to it but at the same time, we must do it in such a way that we can help those persons who want to make themselves better and get out of the gang life so we have to look at it from both standpoints law enforcement and intervention slash mediation."

Jules Vasquez
"How would you answer the criticism that when you were at eastern division and you wanted to be south side super cop you are the one who undermined, negated and bypassed the CYDP and now you're running back to the rock for rescue, as the old gospel song says."

Chester Williams
"I don't know where that critique would be coming from, oh from you, now if it were coming from CYDP I would have a concern because myself and the director Ms. Marinette Westby we have a very good relationship from I was at the eastern division, I did engage them we've done a lot of work together. CYDP understand that the gang dynamics in Belize is too big for just them to handle and so they have always advocated that if any other agency that wants to help they are willing to get that assistance and so there has never been any animosity between myself and the CYDP."

The Police Department has assigned two members of the anti-gang task force to Dangriga. They will be working on going after gang members in Bella Vista and the entirety of the Stann Creek District.