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And this afternoon when our news team joined Gillett and Deputy Commissioner Richard Rosado on a walk-through of the area they introduced us to the residents and told us how they plan to effect necessary incremental change.

It was an afternoon tour of the ghost town area for Deputy Commissioner Rosado and the newly returned commander of the eastern division, Howell Gillett. And rather than directly combatting crime this afternoon they were putting community policing into practice by performing some much-needed outreach on Mayflower street.

Dr. Rosado, Deputy Commissioner of Police
"First of all, I want to say as a department we are trying to change course and we are trying to change direction and we are moving towards a multi-sectoral crime prevention and crime control. We believe that by engaging the stakeholders in addressing the root cause of crime we will be able to focus as a department on our mandate of prevention of crime, apprehension and prosecution of offenders and the wider of enforcement effort. Today basically what we were doing was going actually engaging the elderly to assure them that we have a new commander in the area in the name of Mr. Howell Gillet who will continue the efforts that we have been doing in the past."

Howell Gillett, OC, Eastern Division
"The elderly are the people who offer the support to the young people so it was good to come and speak with those who we believe have a voice in the community and we are happy to have been back here. It's an area that have been for some years Mr. Rosado came and he re-engage the community and this is one of many of the communities that we will work with. We try to create neighbourhood watch groups within these communities so that the community could take care of itself."

And that's just what they did, reaching out to many that are perhaps tired of fighting and looking for a drastic change in lifestyle.

Dr. Rosado, Deputy Commissioner of Police
"As a department we must be able to balance both the community initiative, engaging the at risk and our operation targeting those known criminals. I believe that there must be a balance within both of them and a key component of our strategy is to engage the at risk. I believe that if we engage them they will be able to communicate to us whenever they have issues, concerns and we will be able to address it before they resort to the violence."

And one way that the cops in partnership with LIU is handling that risk is through an effort to relocate some of these residents and re-engage them in agriculture.

Dr. Rosado, Deputy Commissioner of Police
"We have been engaging with them and from what I am getting is that they are willing to relocate from the area and move to the location. And I think it's a good start for them it would give them a new environment for them to be able to sit, reflect and see how they move forward from there."

Gillett for his part returns to his former post with an eye on the future and today he dug deeper than the obvious looking not just at keeping the peace between the current combatants but at shifting the tide of violence that threatens to engulf the next decade of Belize city's history.

Howell Gillett, OC, Belize City
"I am told by personnel from the ministry of education that there are a number of people, young people who have left the school system because of Covid, the police again that is not our type one style policing but what we would do is we would engage the ministry of education and other stakeholders to try and educate these young people because some who are critics might say oh well that's not a policing issue but of course if you leave it to fend for the next two to five years it will become a serious policing issue so prevention is better than having to solve crime in the future."