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Cops Urge Threatened Storeowners To Limit Use of Caps
posted (June 17, 2020)
The topic of thieves using the abundance of mask wearers to their advantage came up in our conversation this evening with the Police Commissioner. He told the press that police have come up with advice that they think will help to protect the business community from the criminal opportunists. Here are his comments:

Chester Williams, Commissioner of Police
"You would know that the wearing of face mask really and truly help the criminal elements, but we do understand the reason why people have to wear it and so we have to look at strategies that we can implement and one such thing that we are doing is to work with the business sector with a view to see how they can monitor more closely persons who visit their establishment, like for example we are telling them to put up signs outside that would say for security reasons take off your cap and your sunshade before entering, so that the merchants are these business places will be able to have that opportunity to see who is entering the establishment. If it is that you see someone disobey the sign and comes in with a cap and a sunshade, then that would automatically alert the shop keeper and he may prepare himself in the event that such person may come in to do a robbery or some other criminal activity, so we are also implementing where the police are now making more frequent visit at the different business establishments all with a view to show that presence of police officers that we believe may deter the criminal elements from wanting to go and commit crime at those establishments."

Jules Vasquez
"But at the end of the day and we discuss this a few days ago, but at the end of the day you will accept that joblessness is increasing, social desperation is increasing and inevitably as those things increase crime has a proportion increase especially robberies."

Chester Williams, Commissioner of Police
"Yes, and most naturally the recipe is there, everything is there that would allow for an increase in property crimes, not only robberies, but even burglaries and theft. If we look around us in other countries that are in similar condition as us, the crime rate is much higher. There is more robberies, burglaries and so forth, so I still believe that for the most part our Belizeans are law abiding as much as we know that some of them are desperate."

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